Tarah Woodblade

by Trevor H. Cooley

  Tarah seemed to have the impression that the smugglers were stupid, but Djeri knew that was far from the truth. The dwarves were well organized. They used tactics gained from thousands of years of collective experience hunting rare game.

  While Tarah and the others followed the tracks, Donjon relayed their findings to Shade by the use of flattened message stones very similar to the stones the academy used. Shade hung back, coordinating the rest of the group, sending scouts ahead so that they could avoid travelers, while keeping the wagon as close to the trackers as he could. Biff organized the movements of the rest of the camp and was in charge of provisions.

  The mountain terrain was tough and the wagon was constantly jostled this way and that, sending agony through Djeri’s damaged limbs. He knew that getting away from this group would be extremely difficult. While he wracked his brain for possible solutions, one constant distraction haunted his mind.

  Tarah Woodblade had saved him with a kiss.

  His heart beat faster whenever he thought of it. He had been in so much pain at the time and was sure his death was imminent, but the moment her lips had touched his all pain and worry left. For a few seconds, Djeri had been somewhere else.

  It had been an act, he knew, done out of necessity. But in a way that made it mean all the more to him. Tarah hadn’t done it to save herself. She had done it to rescue him. She had done it despite the humiliation that would come; despite the fear and uncertainty that had to be filling her mind. It was ridiculous, but for him that made the kiss all the more real.

  The smugglers stopped the wagon half way through the day and Peggy was kind enough to shove a roll into his mouth. She didn’t seem inclined to hold his waterskin for him while he drank from it, though. She just dropped it in his lap and strode away mumbling to herself.

  Djeri knew Tarah must have been making progress with the tracks because they got moving again a short time later. The driver mentioned something about their quarry heading over the mountain. The scouts had found a seldom-used wagon trail that curved up the mountainside and Shade had decided to move the whole camp.

  The trail was rocky and pitted and sometimes headed upward at such a sharp angle that Djeri feared he was going to tumble right out of the back without the use of his arms to stabilize him. There were many rough stretches where the horses were straining but the wagon barely moved.

  That evening they joined up with Shade and found a spot to camp. It wasn’t an ideal spot, just a section of the mountainside where the ground plateaued for a stretch. Quarters were tight.

  Peggy brought Djeri over to Neddy and told him to set up his own tent if he wanted one. The smugglers had loaded a spare tent on the animal’s back and Djeri struggled to lift his arms enough to reach the ties holding it on. The mule actually seemed happy to see him, nudging him and snorting excitedly.

  Djeri managed to drop the tent to the ground, but soon gave up on the idea of setting it up himself. He leaned against the mule feeling useless. His arms would need to recover soon or escaping was going to be impossible.

  Tarah and the other trackers didn’t arrive back at camp until after dark. Donjon took her directly to the command tent where she spent a good half hour reporting to Shade before she was allowed to find Djeri. She embraced the mule and scratched behind his ears, then told Djeri what they had found during the day.

  Tarah had followed the rogue horse’s tracks all the way to the peak. The beast had spent a full day at the top before climbing down the far side. There was more, but Tarah couldn’t tell him with all the dwarves close by and listening.

  Later after they had eaten, Tarah set up the tent. Djeri stood awkwardly to the side feeling nervous. The smugglers were confident enough to let them share a tent but they were wedged between two others. Djeri was worried that they wouldn’t be able to talk without being overheard. Luckily the dwarves around them were snorers.

  Djeri lay on his back in agony, pain shooting up and down his damaged arms, but all that was forgotten when Tarah turned on her side and leaned in close to whisper her true findings. He could feel the warmth of her breath on his ear and he was grateful that the darkness hid the way his skin flushed red.

  As Tarah had touched each track on the way up the mountain, she had discovered something peculiar. The rogue horse had no idea where it was going. The beast took every step with purpose but, unlike with most creatures, she never caught a glimpse of the direction it had in mind. Over time she had realized that this was because the creature was following instructions. This rogue horse had a rider.

  They debated the identity of the rider late into the night. Djeri figured it must be a bonding wizard. The other rogue horses he had met had both been bonded. Tarah was unsure. She had looked hard, but had not found any of the rider’s tracks.

  The next day Djeri awoke feeling much better. Moving his arms still took effort, but the pain was greatly reduced. Tarah had to pack the tent back up, but he was able to tie it to the mule unaided.

  Tarah left with Donjon early and Djeri went back to the wagon for the day. This was his method of travel for the next several days while his arms regained their strength. Tarah led the smugglers over the mountain and down into the hills on the west side.

  Winter came on with full force as they came down the mountain. A heavy snowfall hampered their ability to follow the wagon trails. Shade was worried that they would lose track of the rogue, but Tarah impressed them all with her ability to find new tracks even in knee deep snow.

  The tracks took them quite close to the back road to Wobble and the group had to go out of their way several times to avoid groups of Dremald soldiers that were patrolling the area. Tarah had considered leading them into one of the patrols on purpose, but she realized that the soldiers would have no defense against the dwarves’ paralyzing weapons. Not only could they get many innocent soldiers killed, Shade would not react kindly to such a gambit. So she held course with their plan.

  As slowly as they moved, held back by the weather, they gained on the rogue. The beast sometimes stayed in one location for a few days before moving on. Most often its resting places were small stands of trees not far from a human settlement.

  Several small details about the rogue horse came to light after days of tracking. Some of it was useless. Tarah learned it had a name. The rogue horse thought of himself as Rufus. He enjoyed climbing trees and ate grass and leaves as well as hunting the occasional animal. He ate a lot. In fact, it seemed he liked to try eating just about everything he came across. The dwarves were often finding interesting things in the manure he left behind; strange bones, poisonous berries, small rocks, and one time a silver piece.

  In the first week they gained eight days on the beast and Tarah became worried that they would catch up to it. She and Djeri spent their nights whispering about escape plans and contingencies.

  It wouldn’t be an easy task. Though the smugglers let them have relative freedom within the camp, there were always dwarves keeping an eye on their movements. Whenever Tarah was out with the scouts, Djeri wasn’t allowed to go with her.

  He began traveling with the main body of the camp and eventually he had enough strength for the smugglers to put him to work. Djeri was called upon to help load horses and carry water and supplies. Through it all, he kept his armor on like he had been trained. All except for his gauntlets, which Mel had conveniently lost.

  Shade didn’t seem inclined to give them their other weapons back. Tarah asked and each time he declined, telling her he saw no need to take the risk. Djeri began to worry about the Ramsetter. He saw the dwarves passing it around several times examining the blade and one night he watched as Mel and Leroy used it to cut through some heavy chain.

  Mel was a constant thorn in Tarah’s side. He was one of the company’s best trackers and took to following Tarah around while she was working, constantly asking vulgar questions and making suggestive remarks. At night he would sometimes stand outside their tent and listen, breathing heavily.

  On
e night Tarah came back to camp with a swollen black eye. She was limping and holding her ribs. Mel had pinched her behind and Tarah had knocked out two of his teeth with her staff. Donjon had frozen her, allowing Mel to kick her repeatedly before calling him off. She spoke with Shade, but the man had been unsympathetic, saying that she needed to control her temper.

  Djeri was furious, but Tarah refused to let him do anything about it. They couldn’t afford to do anything that might further compromise freedoms they had been given. Tarah wasn’t allowed a healing potion this time, so Djeri put the necklace on her instead. The item seemed to work much faster with her, but Tarah could only wear it for short periods of time because of the increased pain it gave her.

  The next day Mel took to wearing the Ramsetter on his back. He claimed that he was holding it for “safekeeping”. Whenever Tarah would complain about it, he would turn and grin, showing her his missing teeth.

  That evening Djeri and Tarah discussed a plan for getting back at the dwarf. They humored themselves with several very nasty methods of revenge but settled on something much less likely to net reprisals. They followed a suggestion from her grampa. Make allies.

  Instead of being stubborn, they became more helpful. Tarah began sidling up to Donjon, calling him sir and complimenting him on his tracking skills. Djeri worked hard and did his best to make friends with Biff who, it ends up, was his grandfather’s cousin. The gray-haired dwarf was in charge of the horses and provisions and had the respect of the rest of the smugglers. Djeri found out that Peggy was his daughter and that she sympathized with his and Tarah’s plight because she had been caught trying to run away from home with her boyfriend a few years before.

  Over time they ingratiated themselves with the crew enough that they started to get results. Biff confided his concerns about the camp’s other leadership to Djeri a few times. One morning Donjon even told Mel to stop giving Tarah such a hard time.

  Two more weeks went by and they continued to gain on the rogue. It had been zig-zagging across western Dremaldria, seemingly traveling from town to town always staying on the outskirts. Still there was no sign of the rogue’s mysterious rider.

  Whoever the rider was, they seemed very careful about staying unseen. This was good because it kept the other trackers from discovering the beast had a rider, but the rogue’s tracks left Tarah confused. Rufus was proud, strong, and highly intelligent, sometimes thinking in fully formed words, yet she never found memories of his rider’s name or even specific commands he or she had given it.

  Eventually they were only days behind the beast. Shade increased their pace, sure that the end of their hunt was in sight. Strangely, almost as if it knew it was being followed, the rogue horse stopped its wandering and made a beeline to the west. The winter weather hampered their ability to keep up. Snowfalls and frozen earth made tracking difficult and Tarah rode a fine line between slowing the other trackers down and making occasional discoveries that showcased her skill.

  The cold weather, along with Tarah and Djeri’s increased status in the eyes of the leaders, brought out a division in the camp. Mel and a few others, including Leroy and the dwarf woman Melba, whose stew Djeri had ruined on their first night at the camp, began a campaign of harassment.

  One night, their tent was pulled down on them while they were sleeping. The next day Djeri found out that someone had peed in his wash pail. After a dead bird appeared in their stew, Djeri began to cook all their meals himself. Tarah identified the culprits by those who where snickering when the discoveries were made.

  Biff made some quiet remarks to a few of those responsible one morning, but that just made things worse. When they stopped for the night, Djeri found Neddy carrying Tarah’s leather satchel in his teeth. Several lines on the mule’s saddle had been cut and many of their belongings had been strewn out along the trail, including their bedrolls. In addition, several long slits had been cut in the fabric of their tent. They spent the night huddled together on the cold ground under some blankets and their hastily patched tent.

  Events came to a head the next day.

  In the morning, Tarah awoke to find that a horse skull had been placed near her head. She tried to brush off the childish prank, but couldn’t help feeling disturbed. The rest of the pranks had been done from a distance at a time when neither she nor Djeri could see it being done. This one had been more bold. How had one of the dwarves snuck that close in the night without waking her? She had been on high alert.

  Fearing that the skull had been more a message than a prank, she woke Djeri and hurried over to check on Neddy. The mule was fine, but he was holding her satchel in his teeth again. She took the satchel from the mule and clutched it tightly to her chest.

  Tarah opened it, quickly checking to make sure that everything was still there. Sighing with relief, she quickly checked the ground around the mule. Someone had tried to tamper with their belongings again, but there were too many tracks around him for her to tell.

  “Did you fight them off?” Tarah said, and stroked his neck. “You’re a good mule, Neddy. I don’t know how you knew that this meant so much to me, but thank you for watching over it.” She thought about it for a moment and pulled the strap of the satchel over his head, leaving it hanging from his neck. “I’ll leave it right here so you can watch over it better, okay?”

  He snorted, stomping the ground once with one hoof.

  Tarah patted his head and walked back to find Donjon. It was time for the trackers to leave and she still felt that disturbing feeling in her chest. As she approached the boss, she saw Mel waiting next to his horse, leering at her. He licked his lips slowly.

  Don’t abide a bully, said Tarah’s papa.

  She made a decision. It was time to see if her work with Donjon had made any progress.

  “Boss Donjon,” she said. “Can I have a word with you?”

  The black-mustached dwarf frowned, but stepped away from the other trackers. “‘Fore you say nothin’, stop callin’ me ‘Boss’,” he said. “That’s fer members of the band and you ain’t no member.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “What I wanted to talk to you about is Mel. He’s been getting worse and worse lately and I know he’s gonna try and put his hands on me again.”

  “Ugh,” Donjon turned away with a grimace.

  “The thing is, sir, I just wanted to let you know that I intend to defend myself if he does,” she said firmly.

  He looked back at her for a moment and shrugged. “Just don’t go breakin’ any bones.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, relieved. This was true progress.

  They mounted up and headed back to the last point where they’d seen tracks the day before. Once they reached the spot, they left the horses with one of the dwarves and continued on foot. The tracks continued westward towards the Wide River. Tarah could see the sun glinting on the waters at the horizon line.

  It was mid-morning when Mel made his first move. She was inspecting a track and he snuck up on her. Tarah was ready. She whipped her staff out behind her, smacking the back of his hand.

  “Gah! Dag-gum biscuit-breaker!” He jumped up and down, shaking his hand vigorously.

  “What’s that?” Leroy called.

  “Nothin’!” Mel said, shooting Tarah a glare.

  He left for awhile, but came back again just after noon. He reached out and she smacked his hand aside again.

  “Ow! You.” He clutched his hand and gave her an evil glare.

  “Keep your dirty fingers away from me, Mel,” she said.

  “Don’t you play like that with me,” he sneered. “Ever’body knows you like the touch of a dwarf.”

  “Oh I do.” She leaned towards him. “But you’re too ugly to be a dwarf. I’d say you’re more like a kobald.”

  Mel snarled and reached into the holster at his side. He drew his paralyzing rod, but Tarah was ready. Her staff whipped across, knocking the rod from his hand. Then she brought in the other end and cracked him in the side of the head, knocking him
down.

  The blow was hard. A human would have been rendered unconscious. Dwarves were tougher. He bounded back up, holding the side of his head where a knot was beginning to form.

  He reached back and grabbed the hilt of the Ramsetter. His arms weren’t as long as Djeri’s. He had to pull part of it out, then grasp the blade and draw it the rest of the way.

  “You just try coming at me with my papa’s sword, you lily-livered nose-farmer!” Tarah said, twirling her staff.

  He swung the sword in an overhand chop. Tarah knocked the blade to the side with one end of the staff and brought the other end around to smack him on the side of the head again, just one inch above the last blow.

  Mel stumbled back, howling.

  “What the hell is goin’ on here?” Donjon yelled, approaching them from a few yards away. All of the trackers closed in.

  “She attacked me, boss!” Mel said. “Right outta nowhere. Look at my head.”

  “That’s absurd! He was getting all handsy again,” Tarah said.

  Donjon focused on Mel. “This ain’t the first time I told you, boy!”

  “C’mon, she’s lying. I’d never-!”

  “Listen here, you corn-jigger!” Donjon spat, pointing one thick finger at the dwarf’s chest. “We all seen it. If’n you can’t keep your stinkin’ hands off her, I’ll tell everbody what a big humie you are.”

  Mel looked at the others, his eyes wide. “But boss, I ain’t no humie!”

  “That includes my daddy and Aunt Maggie, you clear?” Donjon warned.

  Mel’s face paled. “Yer gonna take her side against mine? A stinkin’ lyin’ girl?”

  “I ain’t lying!” Tarah said.

  “You just get, Woodblade!” Donjon snapped. “Go back to yer trackin’ while I finish talkin’ to my boy, here.”

  “Yes sir,” she said and turned away. She felt pretty good about how that had gone down. Now she just had to worry about the reprisal she knew would come. Tarah followed the rogue horse’s tracks as they continued towards the shoreline, mulling ways to protect herself and Djeri.