The Jack of Ruin

by Stephen Merlino

  She walked Rag into the clearing. Judging by the lack of new sprouts in the raw earth, she’d been right to estimate it was a recent till. And if one yoab had come down from the hills, others must be returning as well.

  Gods leave it. Her plan felt a lot less certain.

  Standing in her stirrups again, she spotted what she’d hoped for—a broad path stretching away between the trees to the south. Mudruffle’s Yoab Highway? To the north of the clearing lay another broad path stretching north. The Yoab Highway. Relief washed down her like cool water.

  She nudged Rag down the south run, a breeze in her face, and Rag stepped more energetically in the soft soil, grateful for the change. Once they left the feeding site, the run ran flat, straight, and wide enough for a pair of wagons abreast. But unlike a human road, it looked like it had been reamed through the forest with a giant battering ram. Logs and boulders and shrubs had been shoved to the side, making low mounds on each side, like mossy hedgerows of rubble. The sand and rock surface of the road itself had been flattened and packed by generations of yoab that left drag marks down the middle and clawed prints along the sides.

  After a check to be sure Mudruffle was well secured, Caris brought the horses into a canter to make up for lost time in the labyrinth. How long had they been zigzagging through the log maze? Over an hour, that was certain. Willard must be out of his rage and wondering what happened to her.

  A new worry pressed in her chest: if anything happened to her, Sir Bannus would find Willard bound to a tree.

  She needed to send the captured horses on their way and loop back to him. As soon as the horses got used to the run—after maybe a mile—she’d cut them loose.

  They’d cantered no more than half a mile when she heard a loud crack from somewhere ahead. It sounded like a breaking tree trunk, but distance muffled it. Rag’s ears pricked forward.

  Caris kept a firm hold on the emotions of the little herd.

  Steady. Safe.

  A minute later, another powerful crack resounded much closer. Rag’s ears oriented ahead and to the right, and her nostrils flared. The strong scent of yoab hit them just as Caris saw something move in the forest only sixty strides ahead and to the right of the run. Or rather, she saw part of the forest move. A mossy hillock rocked side to side as it plowed into a swan log, shaking ferns and seedlings all along the log’s length.

  She felt her stomach drop.

  It was an adult and at least as big as the one they’d met below Abellia’s tower. Small plants and lichens swayed on its peaked back some two fathoms above the forest floor. If it had been asleep, she wouldn’t have distinguished it from a lumpy hillock in the forest floor.

  One of the horses snorted, and Rag’s eyes widened, showing their whites.

  Safe, she told them. Steady. Together.

  The monster had its back to them, and it appeared so engrossed in its meal of rotten log and soil that it hadn’t noticed them. In that instant, she saw three options: she could stop the horses and turn back, she could stop and try to skirt around the beast through the log maze on the opposite side of the run, or she could spur into a gallop and rely on surprise and greater speed to fly past it.

  Her breath stopped as the instant flashed by.

  Then she set her heels to Rag and brought her to a gallop. She would try to fly past before it could react. The other options were too risky, especially if the yoab swallows hadn’t flown south for the winter yet: the birds would raise the alarm, and if that happened when the horses were at a standstill, they’d never get to speed in time to escape. Speed was their best hope. And she’d outrun a yoab once before, when she hadn’t even had a clear road.

  Steady. Safe.

  Twenty strides away, and the yoab’s hind end still faced them.

  She leaned forward and steered Rag to the left edge of the run, the horses’ collective fear threatening to drown her. She had to keep her control this time, or Rag might try to flee into the labyrinth where they’d be trapped and flattened.

  Fifteen strides.

  As the yoab strained against a chunk of rotten log the size of a longship, its hind legs raked mounds of soil behind it, flashing bearlike paws with claws as long as her forearm. Sheets of gray hide puckered and flattened behind the legs, and with every thrust, the little forest on its back rocked and bowed. A loud crump! echoed between the trees, and the longship upended and crashed sideways toward the run. Small trees thrashed, and a hail of dirt and debris showered the undergrowth.

  Rag missed a step, and a surge of horse fear—hot and bright—rose like bile in Caris’s chest, burning and constricting her throat.

  Safe! Steady! Together!

  At five strides, joy hammered Caris’s fear. They were going to make it!

  Then the air around the yoab exploded with darting birds, and her fears were confirmed. Screeching like a pen of angry chickens, the birds fluttered from hollows in the beast’s mossy sides to wheel around its head.

  Horse fear hit Caris like a wall of floodwater. Desperate to keep control, she pulled her influence from the other horses to focus on Rag alone, and released the others to the full flood of their fear in hope that it would drive them south for miles.

  Run! Rag’s panic screamed.

  Steady! Caris said, infusing her with confidence in her speed. But yes! Run! And she let Rag stretch into an all-out race.

  The yoab whirled with astonishing speed for something so huge. This close, Caris saw it was as least as big as the one below Abellia’s; that meant it was old enough that its tiny eyes had long been buried under the folds of skin that piled down its back and onto its carriage-sized head. But Caris knew it could smell as well as some beasts could see.

  Its bulldog jaw hung open like the drawbridge to an earthen keep, showing rows of bony ridges in place of teeth, but as the horses drew even with it on the highway, the jaw clapped shut. Curtains of leathery throat folds puffed and wrinkled like the gullet of a pelican as nostrils big enough to suck up a dog flared toward the horses.

  Steady! Run!

  The blind crag of the yoab’s head tracked them, and as its nostrils closed with a leathery snap, it launched its tremendous bulk for the horses.

  Whether the yoab couldn’t smell well enough to anticipate their speed and direction or whether it simply missed, the monster crashed across the run behind them.

  The charger and one of the captured riding horses drew even with Rag, heads down, ears back, and eyes showing white. Looking back over her shoulder, Caris watched as the yoab thrashed about, then oriented on the scent of horse coming to it on the breeze. The drawbridge mouth released a bellow that echoed through the trees and vibrated every particle of Caris’s body.

  Unhooking the captured horses’ lead from her saddle, Caris tossed it over the charger’s saddle and reined Rag back so the others could race past her. The moment the last of them charged by, she veered Rag left into the log maze so the yoab would follow the others south. Too late, she realized what she’d thought a clear way into the maze was in fact a dead end bound by huge logs and blocked at the end with a boulder the size of four wagons. Rag squealed in fear and tried to leap one of the great swan logs that penned them, but fell back, nearly throwing Caris.

  The yoab thundered up the run toward them, its head angled first after the other horses, then left toward Caris and Rag.

  Caris nearly threw up her breakfast.

  Determined to be in motion if the beast turned on them, and not to be standing for its charge, she spurred Rag back. Rag resisted, trying to veer toward the logs for another attempt at leaping them, but Caris managed to focus her enough to get her up to a galloping charge.

  The ground pitched and Rag stumbled as the yoab pounded down the run as if it would pass the mouth of her dead end and keep going, then swung its head toward them and dug in its fore-claws for a plowing sideways stop. Horned claws still churning, it laid its cragged head low and charged up the dead end toward them.

  Caris yelled out the fear poun
ding in her throat. In the last moments of the charge, she swerved right, hoping to race past the beast and up the run toward Willard, but the great head swung to intercept. Her only option was to swerve left past its opening jaw, but a clawed paw slammed down before them, blocking the left as well, and it was too late to turn or stop.

  Now their only choice was to run right up the back of the gnarled paw, and Rag performed it beautifully, leaping from it into the run beyond.

  As Caris sent waves of confidence and relief and pride into Rag’s harried spirits, the yoab howled. As it began to turn after them, Caris circled with it in the hope that it would lose track of her.

  Smell the other horses! Please smell the other horses!

  A wave of soil hit Caris and Rag like the slap of a giant hand. Rag tumbled into a thicket of ferns. Caris rolled free and hit a rotten log. Her arm jerked as the reins pulled against Rag, but she held tight and focused all her mind on the mare. If the yoab had lost their scent and they stayed still, it might move away and leave them. Caris poured so much of herself into Rag that the horse reacted in a kind of stunned shock.

  Safe. Together. Stay.

  Rag struggled to her knees, eyes white-rimmed with fear. Caris let her clamber to her feet, but kept up the intense focus while holding her bridle low so Rag couldn’t rear.

  Safe. Together. Stay.

  Only six paces away, she dimly sensed the yoab’s hind claw gripping the earth. The great bulk had stilled, but she heard a mighty snort and the snap of leathery nostrils. From the corner of her eye, she saw the huge head swinging left and right.

  Her heart beat so hard that she feared the beast would sense it, but the yoab continued to snort and suck the air from down the road.

  Gods leave us, we circled downwind and it’s lost us!

  The enormous claw before them tore into the earth with gut-wrenching violence, and the mountain surged away. In two mighty strides, it rose on crooked stumps and thundered after the other horses like an avalanche in a chute.

  Caris let her relief flow back against the mare’s fear—Safe! Safe!—and as she watched the yoab gallop away, she stood and hugged herself into Rag. Tears of joy wet her cheeks. Their tumble had been a blessing, she realized. If they’d stayed on their feet and tried to run past the yoab, the creature would have sensed the pounding hooves along its flank and lashed out.

  In spite of Caris’s soothing, however, the poor mare’s eyes still rolled, and her ears still pricked toward the south and the dwindling roar of the yoab. Stroking her neck and bathing Rag’s mind in a sense of safety and security, Caris walked her back into the maze. Something thumped behind her, and she turned to see Mudruffle lying rigid and facedown in the moss.

  Heart leaping in her chest, she picked him up and pulled a few stray ferns from his hat. “Gods leave me, you held on just long enough,” she said to the senseless golem. “If you’d let go during that mayhem, I might never have found you again.”

  After lashing him tightly to her gear, she hobbled Rag a good bowshot from the run, and went back to hide their tracks as best she could. Sir Bannus must find no prints leaving the yoab run. When she finished replacing divots and covering scores in the moss, she mounted Rag and they began the laborious process of picking their way through the maze toward the river. Once they crossed the river, they would find a trail up the opposite side and hook back to Willard.

  Willard. She smiled. She had a triumphant story for him. Not only had she run the horses south, but she’d enlisted a yoab to spur them along.

  Her only worry was that she’d used the captive horses a bit callously. She looked south through the trees, chewing her lip. They would outrun the yoab, but then they’d be lost in the woods, miles from farm or stable. She had to comfort herself with the thought Bannus’s men would track them and they’d soon be back in a stable.

  And let Sir Bannus meet the yoab. Gods leave it, wouldn’t that be a glory.

  Emerging at last at the river’s edge, she looked up to see that the sun had advanced well past noon. A knot of tension twisted in her stomach. The old man should be back in his skin, but she feared she’d taken too long and they would not be able to catch up to Harric and the others before sunset.

  “Gods leave it,” she muttered, as Rag splashed out of the river and up a stony draw on the opposite bank. She did not want to camp alone with Willard. Not with Molly lusting for flesh and the rage so fresh in his Blood.

  …an unknown tooler is said to have accidentally discovered the process for refining fire-cone resin…after harvesting the resin from a batch of cones, he is said to have used the empty cones to flavor his moonshine… When bits of resin still in the cones dissolved in alcohol, they separated from seeds and oily impurities and left a residue of powder in the bottom of the jugs. We call that powder blasting resin or spitfire resin.

  —First Tooler’s Primer, Master Tooler Jobbs

  32

  Seeds Of Sorrow

  Harric reined in at the foot of a huge red cedar rising straight from the middle of the yoab run. Where the trunk met the ground, the tree was wide enough for seven or eight people to link hands and stretch around it. Nothing this big had been seen near Gallows Ferry since the sawmill went up at the rapids. The yoab apparently demonstrated their respect for such a grandmother tree—too huge to push over—by rubbing against it and diverting their run around it; a ragged skirt of bark hung about the base of the trunk for more than twice the height of a man, suggesting the beasts rubbed against the tree like giant cats might against the leg of a giant.

  Thankfully, judging by the sprinkling of needles over the raw soil of the run, no yoab had been here for weeks. That was good. Instead, the soil was pocked with the prints of two-toed hooves of elk that had crossed beneath the great tree’s shadow.

  Harric’s eyes followed the graceful lines of the trunk up into the canopy, where its limbs mingled with those of its neighbors. A couple of black squirrels appeared in some of the lower branches and peered down at him, then skittered around to the other side of the trunk.

  “Father Kogan,” Harric said. “Wake up.” He opened Mudruffle’s map to study the spot where the golem had marked it.

  “Mh? What’d I miss?”

  “You missed me cursing this map.”

  “Pah. Bet you curse like a baker’s wife.”

  “Like a frontier bastard, you mean. Your ears would have peeled off.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I can’t read the annotation. It says, Red Tree, which is clear enough. But then it either says, steer clear, in Iberg, or path clear.”

  Kogan blinked at him. He leaned out to one side to see around Snapper and Idgit, then his eyes followed the tree skyward. “A beauty.” He yawned, revealing a mouthful of brown, cracked teeth. “Let’s camp.”

  Harric frowned. “Heard a yoab bellow while you slept.”

  “Back near Will and Caris?”

  Harric nodded, and let out a breath to expel some of his worry. “It’s got me thinking the things might be coming down from the heights already.”

  Kogan mashed the sleep from his eyes with a meaty paw. “How do you know it was a yoab? Ever heard one?”

  “Last month. My ears are still ringing.”

  “Har!” Kogan squinted up at the canopy, where a few beams of sunlight slanted down and splashed across the trunks. “Late afternoon, looks like. As good a time as any to camp.”

  “All right. But let’s move off toward the river.”

  Harric found a low gap in the rubble at either side of the yoab run and urged Snapper up and over, onto the spongy moss and ferns of the forest floor. Idgit followed, with Brolli wobbling, asleep, in his saddle. Picking his way between huge rotting logs, Harric headed toward a flat-topped hillock half a bowshot from the yoab run. The site would be close enough to the run that they’d be able to see Willard and Caris when they passed, but hopefully not so close that a passing yoab would notice them.

  “Wake the chimpey?” Kogan said, wh
en they dismounted atop the hillock. Brolli still sagged in his saddle, a blanket draped over his head.

  “Let him sleep.”

  A rumble and crash resounded above the valley.

  Kogan cocked his head.

  “Thunder?” said Harric.

  “Sounds like. Maybe a rockslide.”

  Harric tried to find the direction of the sound, but the echoes of the valley made it impossible, and the canopy obscured their view. The rumbling continued, overlaid with a new rushing sound of wind. The canopy above them sighed and swayed.

  “Storm coming.” Harric hobbled Snapper and Idgit, then pulled the canvas tarp from his saddlebag. “I’ll string up some shelter. If it rains, at least we’ll have a dry spot to sleep.”

  Kogan grunted. “Rain, storm. It comes or it don’t come, and we can do nothing about it. But hungry is different: I can do something for hungry.” As Harric stretched and staked out the canvas, Kogan knelt at Geraldine’s tail, took her udder in his hands, and drank from a teat. Harric’s stomach rumbled. Kogan grinned from behind the auroch. White milk flecked his beard. “Take a teat. Plenty of room.”

  “Thanks. I’ll have strong bread.”

  Harric tacked up the tarp, then retrieved half a cake of the figgy, hazelnutty delight from his saddle. He took it to a hummock with a view of the yoab run, where he sat and ate and listened to the wind in the canopy. The sigh of it seemed to fill the valley. It didn’t take much to imagine it as the sound of a waterfall, or the rapids of the river at Gallows Ferry, or to consider how like the wind those waters sound.