Tarah Woodblade doesn’t cry, reminded her grampa.
“Shut up!” she yelled.
You have been doing a lot of crying lately, her papa agreed.
Tarah slowed. “What?”
For almost a month, you’ve been crying non stop, Grampa Rolf said.
Bawling, her papa said.
“Don’t say things like that.” This wasn’t the way things worked. The words she heard in her head were memories, things her papa and grampa had told her when they were alive. They never said something new.
Maybe it’s time we started, papa said. Old advice is old.
Sure. Listen to us babble. You might as well go full on crazy, Grampa Rolf said with a snort. Forget Tarah Woodblade. You can become Tarah, the Crazy Hag that Lives in the Woods of Razbeck.
Not bad, Her papa agreed. The name’s a little long, but-.
Tarah laughed and the voices vanished. They were correct. Or rather, she was correct. They had been her thoughts after all. She was driving herself crazy. She had gone through a long and traumatic month and she wasn’t thinking right. She just needed to calm down and think rationally.
Poor Djeri. Tarah winced. Oh, why was she so stupid? Djeri had been right. Completely right. The staff didn’t matter. Not with everything else that had happened. Maybe she would find it some day. Maybe not. But for now . . .
She leaned against a tree and a powerful memory entered her mind. A beast had brushed against this tree not long ago. A great and beautiful beast.
Her heart thundered. A beast had been here. She had felt its memory without her staff!
Tarah began looking around for more signs of the creature. There was one not far away. It was just the slightest indentation in the ground, but her practiced eyes found it. She crouched down and touched the track. This memory was just as strong as the last. The creature was big. It was strong. And it was scared.
Tarah felt a shiver go down her spine. The power of the memory was the same intensity as the memories of the rogue horse she had been following, but this wasn’t the same beast. It was different.
She walked forward, following its path through the woods, touching every trace of it she could find and each one brought a powerful memory. Oh, this beast was clever. It moved quietly, softly, afraid of being seen. And its tracks were fresh.
The traces of its passing were minor, so faint that most trackers would miss them. In fact, Tarah may have been the only one that could find them. She saw the littlest things, the bent leaf, the slightest scuff on tree bark, and they brought a picture up in her mind.
This rogue horse was a she and she had been around a long time. Centuries for sure, and she had survived all this time on her own. Alone in the world and she had done it by hiding. This beast could hide, often times in plain sight. Tarah didn’t understand how she did it, but she did. This rogue horse, her fear is what kept her alive.
“Esmine,” Tarah said. That was the rogue horse’s name. Her father had given her that name long ago. Esmine’s memory of him was very faint; just a pair of kind eyes and gentle hands that would stroke her scales and sometimes comb her mane. Yes, the memory was faint, but she held onto it. She thought of him all the time.
Tarah continued following the tracks. She didn’t know for how long. She didn’t eat, she just kept tracking. She crossed a wide road at some point and climbed over a farmer’s fence. A dog ran at her barking and snarling. It wanted to bite her, but she just waved her hand and it ran away. She had no time for dogs or any other fears. There was just the horse. There was just Esmine.
Esmine was gentle. Her teeth were sharp and her hoofs were hard, but she didn’t like to fight. She stayed away from violent things. She hid from danger. She ate leaves and berries and bugs and sometimes the carcasses of dead things she found. She also hunted from time to time. Elks, foxes, the occasional orc perhaps if she was hungry enough. But she didn’t hunt anything that was dangerous. There was that giant once, but it had been asleep and it had been easy to tear its throat out.
Esmine loved to run. She loved to jump and frolic. Sometimes she would watch people. Human people like her father, or short people, or the skinny elves. But none of them saw her. Esmine was too careful. She was too fearful to let that happen.
As Tarah closed in on her, Esmine discovered something strange. There was a human following her. A human woman with a filthy armor was walking behind her and touching the places where she had stepped.
Esmine found it frightening, but interesting. She had learned to be careful with her tracks. She was careful not to leave a mark. A thousand years of experience had taught her how to stay hidden, yet this human continued to follow.
Her instincts told her to run, but this human was so intent on her tracks it made her curious. From its scent the human was a female. It had the weapons of a human; the hunting bow, the biting sword. Yet she didn’t believe it was hunting to feed its young. There was no urgency. No hunger to its movements.
How strange, Esmine thought, her curiosity overwhelming her fear. The human followed her no matter what she did. She began to walk in circles, staying just outside the human’s grasp. Circle. Circle. It kept going. It hadn’t even realized that she was playing with it. A strange thought occurred to her. What would the human do if she were to stop?
Tarah’s fingers touched something warm. She breathed slowly for a moment as she came back to herself. Tarah had been tracking the rogue horse for so long her thoughts had been blending together with the rogue horse’s memories. It took her a moment to understand that she was touching Esmine right now.
The strange thing was that Tarah couldn’t see her. The scales under her fingers were translucent. If she focused very hard, she could just make out the slightest shimmer. Tarah smiled. Now that she knew what she was looking for, she could just make out its shape. Esmine was similar in size to the horse Tarah had been riding with the smugglers. In fact, from the vague outline she could see, Esmine’s shape was very much like a regular horse.
Tarah looked towards the vague shape of the rogue horse’s head and knew that as equine as it seemed, there was a mouthful of teeth there waiting to bite her if she did anything stupid. She swallowed, realizing how strange it was that Esmine was allowing herself to be touched.
“H-hello,” Tarah said softly. “I’m not going to hurt you, Esmine.”
The rogue horse snorted in surprise and Tarah forced herself not to flinch. That had been surprise at hearing her name from a human’s mouth. The rogue was likely a hairsbreadth from running away.
“Shhh,” Tarah said, softly running her hand down the rogue’s flank. “It’s okay. I learned your name from your tracks, Esmine. It’s a power I have. I can’t explain how it works. In fact, I understand it even less today.”
Esmine didn’t move and Tarah carefully, gently, leaned forward to lay her ear against the rogue’s chest. Esmine’s heartbeat was loud and strong. With each thump, Tarah felt like she understood the rogue a little better. Esmine had been created. Somehow her father had taken the best parts of many animals to create a new one. Esmine had been designed for stealth.
Tarah opened her eyes and had the incredibly strange experience of watching her body disappear. The rogue horse was enveloping her in its magic. “Oh, Esmine, you are perfect aren’t you?”
She felt the rogue horse’s hot breath on her face. Tarah reached out and felt the underside of Esmine’s neck. She ran her hand up to the underside of the rogue’s chin, feeling the sharpness of her pointed teeth.
“What do you look like?” she asked. Esmine exhaled loudly and Tarah felt somehow that the rogue horse was making a decision. “Show me. What do you look like really?”
Slowly the translucence faded and milky white scales began to appear. Esmine’s body was shaped just like Tarah had imagined. She looked like a horse, though her tail and mane were fiery red. But that was where the equine ended and the strangeness began.
Esmine’s ears were very un-horselike, curling into pointed spirals
. Her eyes were a solid red, matching the color of her mane. Her snout was long and covered with bony spikes and her teeth were pointed, protruding from her jaws like those of a great reptile. Tarah smiled. To most people that face would be a nightmare, ugly and fearsome, but Tarah saw something beautiful. This was a face that showed the rogue horse could defend itself.
Esmine seemed to be taken aback by the lack of fear in Tarah’s eyes. She had been prepared for Tarah to run away in terror. Instead, the human had smiled. The rogue horse felt an urge she hadn’t felt in centuries. Esmine had been created to hide and to sneak. But there was one purpose she had been made for that she hadn’t done since leaving her father’s herd.
Esmine gave Tarah a gentle nudge and a single simple word entered Tarah’s mind, a word that all rogue horses knew. Ride.
“Yes!” Tarah said. She had never tried to ride bareback before, but somehow she knew that it wouldn’t be a problem. Deep down Tarah understood that this was the horse she was meant to ride. She reached up, preparing to swing her leg up and over the horse, but something went wrong.
Esmine jerked. At the same time, Tarah felt something sharp pierce her shoulder. She looked down and saw a long crossbow bolt protruding from the rogue horse’s neck. It had gone all the way through the horse and pierced her moonrat armor.
Blood spurted from Esmine’s neck. It splattered Tarah’s face, filling her open mouth. Esmine’s blood tasted of salt and metal, but there was also a strong sweetness. Tarah fell. She swallowed the thick fluid as she hit the ground. She tried to climb back to her feet but there was no strength in her legs. The best she could do was roll to her back.
Esmine let out a piercing scream of fear and rage. Blood continued to pour from the rogue horse’s neck, coating Tarah’s chest and arms. Esmine turned, standing protectively over Tarah’s prone form as gruff voices came from the woods around them. Dwarf voices.
At that point Tarah couldn’t move. She hadn’t been hit by a paralyzing spell like before. It was something else. She was pretty sure that the crossbow bolt had been poisoned. That made sense, but she was finding it hard to think right.
I’m sorry, Esmine! This is my fault. Tarah wanted to say it out loud but she couldn’t form words. Esmine’s blood was thick in her mouth and she could barely swallow to keep from breathing it in.
Esmine let out another scream. She snorted and stamped her feet. Then when the dwarves started appearing out of the trees, she turned translucent again, or tried to. The poison in the bolt was somehow disrupting her magic and the camouflage was spotty. Her legs quivered and Tarah knew that she was having trouble standing.
“Holy hells, that’s an ugly one!” said a voice Tarah recognized as Mel’s. Why was he still alive? She had hoped he was dead.
“All rogues are ugly, you con-founded idjit! And you shot it in the dag-blamed neck!” This was a voice Tarah didn’t recognize.
“I-I didn’t mean to, Ringmaster Blayne,” Mel said in a pleading manner. “It’s this blasted wound. I was aimin’ fer the shoulder.”
“I didn’t friggin’ say to shoot its shoulder!” said the ringmaster. “You was supposed to shoot its rear!”
A dwarf dressed all in black with a wide-brimmed hat walked into Tarah’s field of view. He twisted the tip of his black handlebar mustache with thick fingers, a scowl on his face. Mel had called him Blayne. Tarah recognized that name. He was Donjon’s father, one of the higher-ups in Maggie Cragstalker’s band.
“Robert, stop the bleedin’!” Blayne said and glared towards the trees “Mel, if this thing dies, I’m cuttin’ off yer babymaker and turnin’ it into a coin purse.”
Esmine staggered to the side, nearly stepping on Tarah’s hand. Her skin pulsed, splotchy patterns of translucence ebbing and fading as she fell to her knees. Several dwarves rushed in from the trees, one of them kicking leaves and dirt all over Tarah in his haste to get to the animal.
Esmine reared and tried to bite, but one of the dwarves threw a thick sack over her head. Another one rushed over and yanked out the crossbow bolt while the one called Robert jumped on the rogue horse’s back and packed blue powder into the wounds on either side. The bleeding slowed and stopped.
The dwarves backed up and the rogue horse screamed again. She tried to stand, but kept collapsing.
“Is it gonna live, Ringmaster?” Mel asked, sounding worried. He stepped into Tarah’s line of sight and she saw that the dwarf’s head was bandaged up heavily, as was his hand.
“You’d better hope so,” Blayne replied.
Mel swallowed. “Then why’d you have me shoot a crossbow? Not that I’m sayin’ it’s yer fault Ringmaster. But why didn’t we just pop her?”
“Paralyze spells don’t work on rogues, you idjit!” Blayne said. “This stuff does the trick, though. You’cn see the poison’s got her now. She’ll be sleepin’ soon.”
Tarah could feel the effects on her body as well. She felt tingly all over. Her eyes drooped.
“What about scars?” asked another dwarf. “She’s gonna have some nasty ones when that wound heals up. Will that take down her value?”
Blayne snorted. “The gnome won’t care about scars. What shape it’s in don’t matter as long as it’s alive when it gets there. After that? Well if we’re lucky, he’ll let us take the body home.”
“Hey, where’s the girl?” asked one of the dwarves.
“I dunno,” said the one Blayne had called Robert. His head was shaved, but for the mustache. “I tell you I done saw her head this way. She walked right across the road like she had no clue anybody was lookin’ fer her. Did you see anythin’ Mel?”
“I thought she was there when I shot,” Mel said. He looked right at Tarah. “She must’ve run off.”
What were they talking about? Tarah struggled to comprehend it through her clouded mind. She was lying out in the open after all. Then Tarah noticed something strange. Move her eyes as she might, she couldn’t see her nose. Somehow the rogue’s blood was making her invisible. Oh poor Esmine. Tarah was so sorry.
“I watched that girl walk right up to the rogue,” Blayne said. He shook his head. “I dunno how she tracked it here. I didn’t see no tracks.”
“She’s a real good tracker,” said another voice that Tarah recognized as Leroy’s. “When we was tracking that other rogue in the snow we almost lost it a few times, but she always found it.”
“Want us to chase her down, Ringmaster?” Robert asked.
“Naw. Why bother. Shade hired her to find us a rogue and lookee here, she found us a rogue.” Blayne spat. “Far as I’m concerned, the deal’s done. Send some boys up the riverbank, though. See if they can find the other rogue’s tracks. Maybe we can make this a twofer.”
Esmine had stopped struggling and laid on the ground, breathing slowly. Her large red eyes seemed to be pleading with Tarah to do something. The dwarves pulled out a long piece of canvas and pulled Esmine onto it. As they pulled her away, a shadow fell across Tarah’s face.
“Hey,” Mel whispered, his lips close to her ear. “Yeah, I know yer here. I’m keepin’ that to myself though. I just wanted you to know I’m coming back for you later.”
Tarah’s vision darkened. She barely saw the dwarf stand and walk away with the others. Everything went black.
Chapter Twenty
Tarah’s parting words struck Djeri like a punch to the gut. He watched her walk away, his outstretched arm slowly falling as she disappeared from sight. He leaned against Neddy, breathing heavily.
“I make her sick?” His mind was numb. Stunned, he replayed the moment over and over.
Neddy reached around and bit his hand just hard enough to get his attention.
“Ow! What?” He glared at the mule. Neddy snorted and jerked his head in Tarah’s direction. “No, she doesn’t want us going after her.” The mule rolled his eyes and Djeri glared back at him. “She’ll be fine. There’s not one of those smugglers she couldn’t out track.”
He pushed off of the mule and stepped aw
ay, looking at the river rush by. In the far distance he could barely make the wooden buildings of Filgren on the Dremaldrian side. The great water wheel had been lifted out of the water and stood still. He wondered what had happened to the ferry. He remembered the violence of the river and didn’t see how anyone could have survived.
Clasping his hands behind his head, he turned away and looked into Neddy’s accusing eyes. The whole conversation with Tarah had been surreal. Was she truly a fraud? He didn’t know what to think.
He stood there for a long time, his mind going in circles. How could she say that to him? How could she leave after all they’d been through together? Maybe she really was a coward. After all, she had run away. She had run away from the war and now she had run away from him.
“Come on, Neddy,” he said finally. He grabbed the mule’s lead and pulled him towards the academy outpost. “If we stay here any longer, we’re just begging to get caught.”
The mule resisted for a little while, but eventually he gave up and followed along. Djeri shook his head, mumbling to himself as he went. What had he been thinking, telling her that he cared for her? He was a stupid, stupid fool. How had he expected her to react? Sure she had kissed him. Sure she had saved his life. That didn’t make her beholden to him.
He continued to mull things over in his mind as he walked. The going was slow. This section of the riverbank was only sparsely forested and wind had blown the previous night’s snow into drifts that were sometimes waist high. He growled in anger at the weather. Why was it still winter? It already felt like the longest winter of his life and there were still two months of it left to go.
He pushed on until noon. He was pushing through a particularly annoying snowdrift when it occurred to him that he had let Tarah go without taking any supplies. She took her bow and sword, but he had their blankets and provisions. Djeri stopped, his emotions torn. Surely she’d be fine. She was a survivor after all. She’d been living on her own in the wilderness for years. Still, the thought of her shivering without a blanket, huddled by a small fire made him anxious.
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