Gordath Wood

by Patrice Sarath

  With that, she pushed Mojo into a trot down the gravel drive, leaving Carolyn speechless. Not for long, Kate thought grimly. She knew that Carolyn would add her outburst to her store of gossip. That would be all over the barn in no time. Kate wondered if Carolyn herself had started the rumor about Lynn stealing Dungiven.

  Kate hurried Mojo along the drive behind the main barn and turned down the lane toward the trails, casting a nervous glance behind her. She wanted to clear the stables before she caught anyone’s attention. Her heart sank when she saw Joe, driving the tractor up from the lower barn with a load of hay in the trailer. Busted. He stopped and cut the engine, and she pulled Mojo up next to him. He looked pale under his tan, his eyes red-rimmed and his face rough with stubble. He had looked for Lynn the night before on his own and then went out with the search parties earlier that day. No, she thought. Of anyone, Joe would understand. She straightened in the saddle and gathered her courage.

  “Where do you think you’re goin’?” Joe demanded. Kate was almost always tongue-tied in Joe’s presence. This time she answered without her usual shyness.

  “I’m going to retrace her steps,” she told him.

  “Now, you need to leave it to the police.”

  She shook her head before he even finished. “I know those trails better than anyone. I know what to look for—all the shortcuts, all the dangerous parts.”

  He sat and looked at her. Kate held his gaze defiantly.

  “First damn time I ever wished I could ride,” he muttered. “Kate, I don’t think you should go alone. Whatever happened to Lynn—”

  “They aren’t looking for her,” Kate said. “They don’t care about Lynn. They’re just concerned about Dungiven.”

  “Ain’t that the way you horse people are?” he asked. “Horses first, right?”

  “I’m not worried about Dungiven,” she said. “If Lynn stole him, he’s in good hands.”

  He laughed, and she blushed. Joe said, “Listen, I still don’t like that idea. You know you ain’t supposed to ride alone on those trails.”

  “I know, but—look. I won’t go far. I’ll be careful. All I want to do is check a few places. I’ll come straight back if I see anything.”

  Yeah, like a dead body, thrown from the back of a horse. Neither of them said it, but they both thought it. Just a few years before, an experienced rider had been killed in a fall on the trails.

  “I promise, okay?” she said. He held her gaze for a moment, his dark eyes serious, then started the tractor again and nodded.

  “I’ll be waiting for you, girl,” he told her and let the tractor roll toward the stable. She gathered her reins and pushed Mojo up the driveway.

  Two old stones marked the trail entrance, buried in the dirt so that they only showed as gray, rough mounds, stained with moss and eroded by time. Sparse weeds grew up around them, yellowed by the summer’s heat. Kate turned Mojo’s head and rode him through. The trees closed in, and she shivered in the twilight, goose bumps prickling the skin of her bare arms. She put Mojo into a trot, and he moved out with his usual bouncy energy.

  The little horse, a blood bay with black points and a black mane and tail, was compactly built, his Arabian and quarter horse ancestry combining to form a strong, round, powerful horse, barely fifteen hands tall and full of spirit. Mojo, her dad called it. He was the perfect size for Kate, who wouldn’t be getting much taller than five foot three. She longed to have Lynn’s willowy figure. Instead, she thought, I turned into a tree stump. It didn’t help that she was late to fill out; she felt like she went from being a stick-thin kid to a woman overnight. Sometimes the back of a horse was the only place she felt comfortable, where the embarrassment that colored her entire life, about her hair, her acne, her breasts, her period, melted away, and for a few hours she could forget the horror that was high school.

  Kate pulled up Mojo as they approached a stream, running silver between the brown banks. Sunlight flashed. He stopped and drank, snorting at the water and pawing it a little. Kate leaned forward, giving him rein, and patted his moist shoulder. Mojo tossed his head in the air and snorted again, his bit and curb chain jangling. Light flashed off the silver metal, the glare hurting her eyes, and then he splashed strongly through the water and up the opposite bank, following the well-worn track.

  They came this way often. It was stupid to ride alone— everyone knew that—but Kate felt confident that she knew the trails well enough to keep out of trouble. But so did Lynn. She pressed Mojo on, hurrying now. He quickened his pace to match her mood, and they came up to the first fence. Firmly Kate held Mojo in. He tossed his head, making his disgust clear, but though Kate might ride alone, she knew better than to jump alone. Besides, the turnoff was coming up, and she could let Mojo run there, where the trail widened and the footing was soft and easy. Sure enough, he leaped forward at a touch of her heel against his flank and galloped steadily and happily up the slight rise through the wide field, his hoofbeats drumming a muffled tattoo. They galloped for about a hundred yards, the air streaming by, when a sense of wrongness impinged on her consciousness.

  Kate pulled up and gasped. Startled, Mojo crouched and shied sideways. Kate rode it as if he stood still.

  What should have been a short stretch of open land had become an endless field. They were midway up a sloping hill, with nothing but blue sky and a few puffy clouds above them, and behind her a sea of green and golden grasses. I’ve taken a wrong turn, she thought. Somehow I made it to the other end of the trails, by Aspen Farms. But she should still have been able to see the woods.

  She turned in the saddle, craning to see behind her. Still no trees.

  If I find anything, I’ll come straight back. Kate remembered her promise to Joe. This warranted a swift retreat. She turned Mojo back the way they came, pushing down her niggling doubt. We had to have come that way, she thought. It’s behind us. We had to have.

  Twenty minutes later, she pulled up Mojo again, panic bubbling. They had reached woods—finally!—but it was all wrong. There was no trail. The woods were rough scrub, hardly the woods she knew. She had never been here before.

  “Come on, Mojo,” she said, her voice trembling. “What’s going on? Don’t you know where we are?”

  I need to call home. She reached for her cell phone and remembered. It was still in her jacket pocket, and her jacket was in the tack room. Her stomach clenched with fear. Stop it, she told herself. There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’ll just ride to the next farm and call from there.

  She dismounted at once and loosened Mojo’s girth. He heaved a sigh, and she did, too. She hated walking, but he needed a break. “Sorry about this, Modgie,” she said, patting his neck. At least she wore her paddock boots, not her tall show boots, but it wouldn’t matter if she had to walk for too long. She could feel the blisters starting already.

  As she walked beside her horse, she stripped off her riding gloves, stuffed them inside her small saddlebag that carried her lunch, and took off her helmet, hooking it onto the back of the saddle. Her damp, crushed hair moved listlessly, strands that had pulled free of the french braid straggling around her face. Kate blew up at her bangs in frustration. No matter how she pinned it, she never could get her hair to stay in a braid.

  Her hair was another source of embarrassment for Kate; she sometimes wished she could just trade in her whole outside self for a new one. Like Lynn’s, she thought. The consensus among the women at the stables was that Lynn Romano could have been a model. Carolyn said she had heard a rumor that Lynn was a recovering crack addict. Carolyn had added ominously that if Lynn took any drugs, any at all, she would fall back into a drug frenzy. Some of the other boarders took Carolyn’s assessment seriously. If Lynn was aware of the gossip, she ignored it, another ability Kate envied of her hero. She wished she had the inner serenity, the balance that Lynn had that let her not care what other people thought.

  Kate sighed. Fat chance, she thought. People like me and people like Lynn—we’re whole worlds apart
.

  Once the woods closed in overhead, she felt better. It was cooler, for one thing, and Kate felt like she could think again, out of the hot sun and that eerie field. Even better, she came upon a trail. It was an old, comfortable track through the woods, worn by hooves and other traffic. It was unfamiliar to her, but it was so well-traveled that she supposed it would come out to a farm or to a paved road soon enough. She wasn’t even going to complain about the tongue-lashing in store for her when her parents found out what she had done.

  The air beneath the trees was cool, but where sunlight stabbed down in slender columns, the dust motes danced and the last of summer’s heat bathed her shoulders. Despite the cooler temperatures, the dim light started the panic niggling at her again.

  One good thing: no one would think she had stolen her own horse. Her parents would make sure there was a full-scale search on the trails for her. That way, they might also find Lynn. And Joe knew where she had gone. The thought comforted her a bit.

  “We’ll get out of this, Modgie,” she said, and this time her voice held firm. She patted his shoulder, and he flicked his ear at the sound of her voice.

  Suddenly his head shot straight into the air, pulling the reins taut. At the same time a musky odor reached her on a wayward breeze, so faint that Kate first registered it only as a familiar smell, without identifying it.

  Mojo snorted and jumped sideways.

  “Hey, settle down,” she said, catching the reins under his chin. Kate frowned and breathed in. Oh! she thought. Some-one’s burning leaves. She always loved that smell, and more so now, signaling as it did that they were close to civilization. She turned to Mojo happily. “See? We’re almost ho—”

  She looked twice at her horse. Mojo’s shoulder was slick with lather, and he was trembling, his eyes showing white. Kate gasped.

  “No,” she said out loud, her voice holding the merest tremor. “Just someone burning leaves. It’s got to be.” But the breeze that washed against her cheek carried the smell more strongly. Mojo whinnied. A series of branches snapped like gunfire. Deep among the trees curled tendrils of smoke carrying the smell of burning wood. The crackling sounds came louder, until she saw the flames licking up through the underbrush.

  Fear made her clumsy. With shaking hands she tightened Mojo’s girth and pulled down the stirrups. She unhooked her helmet from the D ring on the saddle and put it on, and scrambled into the saddle. She reined Mojo around, trying to figure out which way to go. He half reared, fighting her control, and she closed her eyes, said a prayer, and let him bolt. His instincts would have to save them both.

  Colar of Terrick sat his nervous horse easily and watched the fires race up the backbone of the ridge leading into Gordath Wood. The dry grass of the hillside took no time at all to catch, and the low-running flames were almost instantly obscured by thick smoke. It was fascinating; the fire moved as if it were alive, consuming the hillside. A breeze off the Aeritan River at his back harried the flames, sending them off into the woods.

  The other scouts shouted as yet another runnel of flame tore away up the hill, and then another, and another. Over the rising crackling of the fire, Colar heard the whistle and turned in the saddle. Captain Artor waved his sword and shouted, signaling them all to come back. Colar nodded, though the captain could not see him, and threw his torch into the grass away from his horse’s feet. The torch smoked dully and then sparked, setting up a gout of flame from the oil-soaked end. Colar turned his horse on its haunches, cantering back and joining the rest of General Marthen’s outriders.

  They gathered around their captain. Artor scanned their handiwork from horseback, resting his forearms on the saddle-bow, the crow’s-feet around his eyes deepening as he watched the fire’s progress. He was as old as Colar’s father, his close-cropped hair and beard salted with gray, his pale eyes red-rimmed. The captain looked around at his men.

  “Good work,” he said, and his face lightened somewhat. “That should smoke him out.”

  “Or chase him back into the Wood,” Jayce grunted, his narrow jaw jutting out pugnaciously. “Waste of time.”

  Colar caught the expressions of a few of the other scouts. Some lifted their eyes briefly, a few exchanged glances and acknowledged Jayce’s comment with an unspoken There he goes again.

  True enough, Colar thought. Jayce always had something to say, and as often as Artor cuffed him down, it never seemed to have an effect. This time Jayce said what they had all been thinking—or at least Colar had been, but he knew better than to open his mouth. At fifteen, he was the youngest scout, the least experienced. This was his first campaign. His father had told him, “Mouth shut, boy, and eyes and ears open.” He wondered sometimes how Jayce got away with questioning orders outright.

  This time Artor didn’t cuff the scout. Instead, he just shook his head; but Colar caught the way his lips tightened. This question angered him more than usual, he thought. He puzzled over it a moment and then realized: Artor hadn’t liked this order either.

  “The river bends to the west of us, and this fire will go straight through the Wood and meet it on the shore,” the captain explained. “If Tharp’s man is truly in those Woods, it’ll drive him straight into our arms.” He emphasized if ever so slightly.

  But the captain grinned, looking back at the fire behind them, and a few of the scouts laughed. Colar remained silent, looking back uneasily at the Wood. He had grown up far away from Gordath Wood but had heard the tales nonetheless. He could not imagine traveling through it. Tharp’s runner had more to worry about than fire. A shudder ran down the young scout’s back, and he was thankful for the leather half coat that concealed his involuntary shiver, and his sparse beard, just coming in, that he hoped hid any expression of fear.

  “Look at that,” said Jayce gleefully, and Colar’s heart jumped into his mouth. But the scout was looking toward the Wood, and the others followed his gaze. The fires had gained speed up the slope and combined at the top of the hill to create a wall of flame. With the help from the river breeze, and with little resistance from the dry, drought-ridden wood, the fire began to climb to the outskirts of Gordath Wood.

  Captain Artor let them watch a moment longer, awed at their handiwork, and then said, “Right. Let’s go.”

  He wheeled his horse and started them off along the river road, the fire roaring above them into the Wood and the sparkling waters of the Aeritan rippling on their other flank. They rode at a fast trot along the shell-covered road, leaving the fire behind them. They would meet it around the river bend and from there try to pick up the man’s trail.

  If, as Captain Artor had intimated, there really was a runner. Colar knew that according to General Marthen’s spies, a man from Red Gold Bridge had set out two days ago, but to what purpose no one seemed to know. Setting the fire to smoke him out was like taking a hammer to an ant, except that even Colar knew there was more to this fire than just driving a wayward courier into the right direction.

  The weapons. Colar hadn’t seen them, but he heard the stories the soldiers brought back. Loud, thunder-cracking weapons with shot not even plate mail could keep at bay. The few skirmishes between Marthen and Tharp had been small, sporadic, and inconclusive, but the weapons had everyone uneasy. A fire might be a hammer to catch a courier, but it could be the right tactic to stop an enemy from arming himself, distract him, and keep him from his supply lines.

  Colar patted his sword hilt as he sat his horse’s long trot. He wanted to get his hands on one of those weapons. The soldiers’ tales all said the weapons had a longer range than even the longbows the archers used, let alone the short, powerful crossbow bolts. More accurate, too, said they. If we had a few of those weapons, Colar thought, it might make all the difference in this war. Then again, it was probably more to the point to find a way to defend against them.

  Captain Artor picked up the pace, and the scouts pushed their horses into an easy, ground-eating lope, alternating with periods of walking to rest the horses. It was a good way to m
ake up distance. They had a several hours’ ride before they reached the river’s bend. Colar looked back a few times over his shoulder. The fire had raced into the Wood, and the only thing to see was the smoke pluming above the forest. The way the fire had moved, Colar thought that it would beat them by hours. He felt excitement push him on; he wanted to gallop full out to the bend where the river approached Red Gold Bridge, but he knew better than that. The horses could not travel far at such a punishing pace.

  Even with the breeze from the river, the air was hot and sweat dripped into his eyes. His leather coat grew unpleasantly heavy, but Colar knew that if they were riding to war he would wear a mail shirt and a helm and would have to withstand the heat and the exercise of battle. He straightened his shoulders stoically and was rewarded when the breeze from the Aeritan did him a favor and blew his red brown hair back off his forehead.

  The small relief revived him, and Colar’s excitement surged. This is it, he thought. This is war. He hadn’t been in battle yet for sure, but he was truly here. Just remembering being ordered by the general to report to Captain Artor made his stomach churn all over again. His father hadn’t said anything, but Colar thought that for a moment the old man had looked on approvingly.

  For the dozenth time he mentally checked off his gear: sword, dagger, mail shirt under his shirt and jacket. He thought about capturing the runner. His eyes were sharp; he knew he could catch the sight of some movement deep into the Wood. He could slip off his horse and signal discreetly to Artor with hand signals to tell him: I see him; he is deep in the Wood. I will bring him to you. The man tries to hide from Colar but the scout pounces, and after a brief struggle subdues him, places his knife at his throat—

  “Hold up!”

  Startled, Colar pulled his horse to a sliding stop, and the horse threw his head into the air and squealed. All around him the other scouts halted less precipitously. Jayce gave him a disgusted look. Artor looked him over but said nothing. Colar felt heat slip up his cheeks. They had arrived at the outskirts of a small village, just before the river’s bend. The fire and the Wood were now behind them, rather than off their flank.