Fiera moved to the saddle, and once again the girl pushed her away. Fiera said, “I’m taller and it’ll be easier for me to do this.”
The girl’s face clouded with a deep frown and a harsh downturn to her mouth. She shook her head violently, dislodging the cap of her cloak to show a mass of brown curls. Stepping up next to the saddle, she effectively shoved Fiera out of the way.
Perplexed, Fiera returned to the fire. What was going on? Did the girl think she had to do these things to pay for her rescue? Or was it simply a gesture of thanks? Well, she wouldn’t be so thankful when she was abandoned in the next city.
Fiera waited while the young girl finished unsaddling Captain, rubbed him with the hem of her cloak, and returned to the fire. Digging in her bag, the child brought out another loaf of rock-hard bread, a full wheel of yellow cheese, a bowl, an earthen bottle, and a long, dangerous kitchen knife. Reaching once more into the bag, she fished around the bottom and then pulled out a handful of oats. Rising again, she walked to Captain and held her hand beneath the horse’s nose.
Captain spoke in Fiera’s mind. I like her. Let’s keep her.
We’ll make that decision once we get to know her better. Though, in truth, Fiera had already made it.
I know her. She brought oats for me. Something you forgot.
I was in a hurry. People were chasing me. I’m sorry. She thought that would end the conversation, but she was wrong.
You remembered food for yourself.
It was in the open, on my way to the door. I’m sorry. Was she really defending her actions to a horse?
The oats were in a bag right by my saddle.
I said, I’m sorry. I don’t know what else I can say. I didn’t see it. I promise that, from now on, I’ll make sure you have plenty.
It would have only taken a few more seconds to grab some.
Captain! As the horse lapsed into blessed silence, Fiera pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. Rebuked by a horse. She could have laughed at it.
Sensing movement by her side, she opened her eyes and saw the girl had seated herself by the fire and was pressing the long knife into the yellow cheese wheel. Might as well get started learning about her right away.
“What’s your name? I’m Fiera.”
The girl pretended she didn’t hear, but her head lowered a little more over her task, hacking at the cheese more than cutting it.
Fiera tried again. “What’s your name?”
When she received that same non-response, she reached over and gently cupped the child’s chin in her hand. Raising her head so that their gazes could meet, she asked, “Do you have a name?”
The girl shook her head and sudden tears spilled down her face. She pulled her chin out of Fiera’s hand and re-focused on the cheese. With a final, savage chop, a butter-colored slice separated from the wheel. The girl picked it up and handed it to Fiera with a chunk of bread.
Fiera’s heart turned heavy. No name. Her anger blazed at the bar matron in Midden, suddenly glad she’d duped her with a coin and had stolen from her. How could a child grow up like that? How could she gain a sense of identity? Independence? It was nearly impossible, and yet, this small girl somehow had. “When I was young, about your age, I had a sister named Marie. May I call you that?”
The little head, still bowed over the knife and the next slice of cheese, slowly nodded.
“Good. Now, let’s have a rule. I want to do things around our camp. I’ll do the heavy things. And the tall ones. You do the light ones and the shorter ones. Does that sound fair to you? We’ll be a team, taking care of each other and Captain.”
Marie dropped her knife and flung her arms around Fiera in a tight hug. When she pulled away, only seconds later, and with a sheepish smile, tears once again streamed down her face.
“Where are you from?” The novelty of being with another witch sparked a million questions within Fiera, but when the girl scowled again, she gave up and concentrated on her food. Perhaps later.
Chapter 4
As a griffin, Efar rose into the night sky and headed north. He took his time, reveling in the chilly air against his face and under his wings. Flying in the clear moonlight thrilled him. The pitcher of ale he’d finished off swaddled his head in a thick layer of cotton. He hadn’t a care in the world.
His eagle eyes didn’t have the night sight of the nocturnal owl, but, because of the lion in him, he could still see well enough if he flew a bit closer to the ground. The road he followed twisted and turned around huge outcroppings of boulders and a gorge that had been, in wetter years, a wide river, but was only sand and stone now. The leafless treetops pointed fiercely up at him like daggers or stakes in a hunting pit.
It wasn’t long before he passed over a tiny campfire, now embers, by the side of the road. Swooping low, he took a better look. Two small forms, probably children, lay on opposite sides of the fire. Both thrashed and jerked in fitful dreams. The shadow of a great draft horse loomed behind the smallest body. Slowly, it dropped to its knees and lay behind it, touching it with its nose. The child calmed into a deep, quiet sleep within seconds. The other person dreamed and thrashed on.
Efar circled. His heart cried for the quiet presence a campfire with strangers, even children, might afford him. He’d spent far too much time sitting on that log in Midden, drinking ale and feeling sorry for himself after Dulcette had left. That made him thrice a fool. First, for leaving Gabrielle. Then, for turning away Dulcette. Finally, for pining over a woman he’d never met and might not even exist.
He looked down at the campers again. He could drop into the woods and spend the rest of the night close to them, or he could fly back to Midden, pick up his clothes, return, and join the campers in person.
As he circled again, trying to make up his mind, the horse below lifted its head and stared at him. Spell broken, Efar banked toward the stars and flew on.
The road below widened into a crossroads. He continued straight on. Occasional campfires dotted the roadside. Within two hours of flying, he noticed that the trees there held some of their leaves. This forest, not afflicted as heavily by drought, only darkened more as he flew north.
Groups of shadows darker than those of the trees darted out from the security of the leaf-covered forest from campfire to campfire. Highwaymen! There had to be twenty or thirty of them, all working in groups of four or five. Fires here and there flickered, sparked, and went out. Seconds later, shapes lurked away.
Directly below him, robbers materialized at an unsuspecting camp. Angling his wings back, Efar dove for the ground. Before he even landed, he was reaching for the first robber. With one rake of his eagle claw, he disabled the man. Leaving him writhing and dying on the ground, Efar snapped at a second thief with his great beak, crushing the man’s shoulder. The robber ran away, clutching his arm close to his side, following two loot-bearing companions.
Efar looked around the campsite. He’d arrived too late. All traces of the camp had been swept away. Searching the sparse underbrush, he found the campers’ lifeless bodies couched beneath, hidden from the world. The fire had been buried in the soft loam of the roadside, the ground still warm to the touch. He changed to human form and hid the now dead robber with the others in the shrubs.
Sorrow filled him and he thought of the children camped on the other side of the crossroads. Somehow, he’d managed to bond with them, though they were oblivious to it. He couldn’t leave them to this fate.
Cursing himself, he undressed the body most closely his size and, clothes clutched in his claws, flew back toward the tiny campfire with the giant horse.
* * * *
Fiera’s dream that night was a quiet and soulless one, the kind a person had when she hid herself so long and so thoroughly that she no longer knew herself. It was a falling dream. The ground gave way beneath her feet, and she fell into a cavern, down and down and down, deep into the swallowing earth, flailing her arms, kicking, and silently screa
ming. There was no bottom; she just kept falling.
She woke, her face and body slick with a familiar sweat. Staring at the bright gems of stars in the velvet black of night, she struggled to calm the frantic beat of her heart. The warm night wind brushed across her, cooling her. How many times had she had that very same nightmare? How many times had she awakened alone, crying for someone to accept her, magic and all? She’d thought, since striking out on her own and no longer hiding, that the bad dreams would have stopped.
With a deep shaking sigh, she turned on her side, facing the dying fire. The girl, Marie, was curled on the far side, like a caterpillar in the spring. Captain lay on his chest beside the child, his nose resting against her hip in a show of solidarity.
The night before had been emotionally traumatic for the child. Fiera had tried to keep the mood light, chattering about nothing much at all, but Marie’s quiet had broken into quick storms of tears and hard hugs. Eventually she fell into an exhausted sleep curled up on the opposite side of the fire.
Fiera smiled. No, she wasn’t alone. Not anymore. There was no need to hide what she was any longer. For either of them. She let herself drift off to a deep sleep that remained untroubled until the first rays of dawn lit her face.
Opening her eyes once again, she stretched and looked over at Marie. The girl still slept in her caterpillar pose, softly snoring, but Captain had moved away. He stood several yards behind her, sniffing at a patch of dead and dried grass that had grown beneath the long outstretched arm of an old oak, now bare as if in the dead of winter. As his muzzle brushed across the grass, brittle from lack of water, the blades broke off, shattering into dozens of tiny pieces. He licked the ground, trying to catch up the tiny shards. His breaths raised miniature dust clouds all around him.
Fiera rose and reached for Marie’s bag. First, she removed the knife, cheese, and bread, and then she scooped out a large handful of grain and carried it over to Captain. Cupping both hands together, she let the oats spread in a wider space to accommodate the width of the horse’s mouth. I’m sorry, you’re on short rations until we can get more.
He shuffled his soft lips across her hands, gently shoveling the oats into his mouth. Well, if you hadn’t forgotten—
Don’t start! I’m in a good mood and I don’t want it ruined. We’ll get more oats at the next village.
I don’t think we should go into any more villages. People don’t seem to like you.
We have no choice, my friend. While Marie and I have her doctored Oxblood soup to drink, you need water. We’ll need to get going soon before someone comes along who might recognize us.
Captain lapsed into silence. He concentrated his tongue on the remaining oats that hid between Fiera’s fingers.
The sound of movement came from the direction of the fire. Captain pivoted his ears, and then he lifted his long nose and looked.
Fiera followed his gaze. Marie, still sound asleep, was thrashing her arms and legs, scraping them on the ground as if fighting or running in a nightmare.
Fiera wiped the few remaining kernels of oats from her hands and ran toward the girl. She dropped to her knees beside the child and reached to take her in her arms. Marie sat bolt upright, screaming in a low, guttural voice, her mouth a black yawning hole, with only a stump for a tongue.
Fiera caught her breath, tears filling her eyes, suddenly understanding the girl’s silence. Someone, somewhere, had cut out her tongue! Sliding her arms around Marie’s tiny form, Fiera tried to pull her close. The girl, however, pushed against Fiera and, with her face flaming red, she jumped to her feet and raced into the woods, twigs and underbrush cracking where she went.
“Marie!” Fiera scrambled upright and followed, but the girl was fast and was soon lost from sight. Clambering on top of a fallen and partially rotted tree, Fiera scanned the skeleton woods. Nothing moved.
From the road, Captain called, I smell someone coming!
She frowned, not taking her gaze from the task of finding Marie. How far away?
There still is some time. They’re down the road a piece, yet. Around the bend. A single rider. Smells like that black that was next to me in Midden. Stinky fellow.
You need to hide in the forest right away! Find a big fallen tree and lie down behind it. Get as low as you can. For answer, Fiera heard the crashing of something huge moving in the woods off to her left. She dashed back to their camp and gathered the knife and food into the hat-bag. Scuffing her feet, she covered the fire with dirt from the road. Then she snatched up the saddle and bridle, pushing her magic into them and changing them back to a blanket.
Fiera bolted to the safety of the forest and the log she’d been standing upon earlier. Before she dropped to the ground, she took one more good look around for Marie. Still nothing.
With a deep sigh, Fiera jumped down from the fallen tree and hunkered behind it. To the north, behind a similar tree, Captain lay on his chest, his neck stretched as long as possible and his jaws on the ground.
The forest of dying trees was silent, yet within seconds of settling into her hiding place, small arms snaked around her waist and Marie squeezed her tight. Fiera hugged her just as strong. She placed her finger to her lips, pointing to the road with the index finger of her other hand. The girl nodded.
Relief at Marie’s safe return rolled through Fiera, but she had to be honest, it wasn’t just for the girl’s sake. It had a lot to do with her nightmare and her loneliness. She just didn’t want to be alone anymore. She sighed deeply and glanced down at her young charge leaning against her. No. She couldn’t abandon Marie anywhere.
They didn’t have to wait long before the grizzled black horse, easy to see through the stark tree trunks, ambled down the road. The flirting fat man from the back corner of the inn in Midden rode, hunched low, watching the ground. When they reached the wayside area and the camp, the man stopped the black. He stared at the smoke eking through the dirt and the scuffs beside it. He lifted his head and roved his gaze over the stark forest.
Fiera held her breath and glanced over at Captain. Be absolutely still. He’s looking this way.
Who? The horse?
Fiera squinched her eyes shut tight, working to control her exasperation. After a second, she opened her eyes again. Why would I be worried about a horse?
I don’t know. You’re the one who said it.
I didn’t…She stopped and shook her head. Now wasn’t the time for an argument. Just be still for a few more minutes.
Ducking lower, she peeked through the rotting branches of the log to watch the fat man. Who was he? What did he want with them?
* * * *
The early morning sun stretched through bare branches and reached the forest floor, waking Efar from his most recent catnap. He’d decided to keep watch from a hollow between some clusters of brown-needled spruces in the woods on the other side of the road and downwind from the children. He’d opted not to join them, for fear of frightening them. Nor did he need the horse smelling him.
Though it had been dark when he arrived, skulking from shadow to shadow, and his view had been partly obscured, he thought the bigger child was a young girl. She could be tempting for many travelers, highwaymen or not.
Stretching his neck to peer above the plane of the forest floor, he saw a fat man on an old black standing still as death beside the campfire. The children and their horse were nowhere to be seen. Had they slipped away in the predawn hours? Efar lifted his nose, using his lion’s sense of smell, and sucked in a great draft of air. The reek of the black horse all but drowned out any other scents. He knew that odor: dragons. Many of them traveled the land, exploring, much like him. Perhaps this horse, then, had belonged to one of them. From the strength of the scent, the dragon had owned it for quite a while, maybe even raised it. Did the rider know? Did he work for the dragon families?
Apparently reaching some decision, the rider slowly left the camp. Sniffing in short breaths with his mouth open, Efar was able
to better taste the other scents of the forest. Two humans and one other horse were hidden somewhere nearby.
Satisfied, Efar crept on stealthy feet after the horse and rider, careful to stay behind the security of the close-growing tree trunks. The heavy man in the saddle had been at the inn. It wouldn’t be unusual for a traveler to come this way, but why had he shown so much interest in the campfire? With slicked back hair, tailored clothes and a thick fob chain across his wide belly, he had the look of a paid informant, searching for someone. The children?
The fat man stopped the horse at a crossroads and studied the ground. He looked down one branch of the cross road and then the other. Finally, he lifted his head and stared down the road straight ahead. After a long moment, he turned the horse to the left and rode away.
Efar emerged from the trees and waited at the crossroads for a long time to ensure the informant wouldn’t double back. When that didn’t happen, he returned to a rock within the confines of the dried up roadside brush and settled down to wait for the children.
Highwaymen straight ahead and the fat informant to the west. That left only one direction for the children to take. He had to convince them to go east.
* * * *
Fiera waited, Marie by her side, with Captain’s brown bulk hidden behind another nearby fallen log. Silence filled the forest. She barely dared to breathe for fear the fat man on the black horse might reappear and find them hiding among the empty trees.
Slowly, she stood, craning her neck to view the road through the bare tree trunks. Captain, do you still smell them?
His voice resounded in her head, The horse is gone.
The man, too?
Gone.
Still, she crept slowly, placing her feet in the dried leaves and twigs with care. Marie followed like a shadow. From behind the other giant log, Captain struggled to his feet and shook himself.
Birthright Page 3
