‘Gardner!’ A blond, thickset individual, who had been leaning against the bar, straightened up and strode towards Meg’s harasser. Gardner sighed heavily and stepped back, glancing once at Meg to grin evilly as he sheathed his weapon. For a moment she wondered if these men had been Samuel’s killers. The man who intervened looked warily at Sunfire. ‘I’m Leader Stone,’ he said to Meg. ‘Please excuse Gardner’s poor manners. He’s been a long time at war. I’ll take your basket into the Archer family. If you’re not interested in staying, it might be wise to go home now.’ He held out his hand to accept the basket. Sunfire growled quietly.
‘Will you give the food to the Archers?’
‘You have my word,’ said Leader Stone, and his eyes sparkled beneath his bushy blond eyebrow ledge. His expression satisfied Meg. She passed the basket to him. ‘I’ll take it straight in to them,’ he said. ‘But I’ll wait until you leave safely,’ he added, casting a wry smile in Gardner’s direction. The disgruntled soldier forced a false smile in return.
Back in the fresh morning air, Meg headed for Button Tailor’s house. Clay Potter nodded as she passed his house. She crossed the bridge, glad to be away from the soldiers. Her father had gone to join the army, but she was certain he would never act like those men. Except perhaps Leader Stone. He seemed nice enough.
The Tailor house was a three-roomed place, with a colourful array of flowers in the front garden. Brightday Tailor was digging in her vegetable patch, at the side of the house, and Meg glimpsed her husband, Needle Tailor, bent over a task in his shed. ‘Hello, Brightday,’ Meg called as she reached the dark-haired woman.
Brightday straightened and brushed moist earth from her hands. ‘Meg Farmer,’ she said with a broad smile. ‘What brings you here this morning?’
‘I was looking for Button.’
Brightday’s expression clouded. She beckoned Meg to come closer, and whispered, ‘He’s not here. If the soldiers or anyone else asks, tell them Button went south some time ago.’
‘Why?’
‘They’ll take him away, Meg. They’ll force him to join the army. That’s why they’re here. They’re looking for young men like Button.’
‘What about Loaf Baker? Or Oak Carpenter?’ Meg asked.
‘All the boys have left the village. If the soldiers can’t find anyone, they’ll move on. You have to pretend you haven’t seen any of the boys for several cycles.’
‘But why take them away?’
‘The war isn’t going as well as the Queen would want. She needs more men to join her armies.’
‘What are you going to do with that horse you found?’ Needle Tailor asked, as he emerged from the shed.
She’d forgotten that Nightwind’s presence would interest the soldiers. ‘I haven’t thought about it,’ she responded.
‘They’ll want to take it back,’ Needle reminded her.
Meg excused herself and walked briskly home, keeping to the left of the road as she passed Archer’s Inn. The soldiers stared again, so she moved purposefully, Sunfire loping protectively by her side. The day was heating up as usual, yet the air felt heavy. When she looked up, shielding her eyes with her hand, she saw that the sky was sharp blue and clear—but to the west there was a bank of dark cloud and her spirit rose. Rain—at last. She avoided her mother and headed for the yard where the grey horse was tethered. She unhitched the dark leather halter from a hook on the side of the pale wooden railing and opened the gate. ‘Come on,’ she crooned as she fitted the halter and reins over the horse’s head. She loosened his hobbles and led him out. Her brothers were nowhere to be seen. Dawn was inside the house. Only Sunfire was watching, ears pricked, anticipating.
Her safest option was to take the horse deeper into the bush. A gully a short distance away, at the foot of the first big hill, had a dry rocky creek bed that only flowed in the heaviest rains during the season of Shahk, and there was plenty of tree shelter. Nightwind would be safe there for a day or two. She tied the reins to the branch of a small tree by the grain shed and fetched a bucket of water. Then she untied Nightwind, and quickly led the horse away, with Sunfire trotting in her wake.
By the time she returned, having secured Nightwind in the gully, the midday heat was stiflingly humid and the storm clouds were looming. Her mother asked her to find her brothers, and get them to cut and stack firewood. She searched the usual fishing spots along the river, but eventually found Daryn and Mykel loitering outside Archer’s Inn. ‘You’ve wood to cut,’ she said.
‘We’re watching the soldiers,’ Daryn protested.
‘There’s nothing to see,’ she said. ‘Come home.’
The boys acquiesced reluctantly. ‘They were packing to go,’ Daryn told her as they walked towards their home.
‘And they won’t be missed,’ she said.
While the boys worked on the wood stocks, Meg took little Peter to feed the chickens and ducks. ‘I can feed them myself!’ he declared after a few moments, and he pulled away from Meg’s guiding hands. She laughed and watched the boy scatter his tiny handfuls of seed for the eager birds. As she watched, she ran her left hand over her tunic, tracing the delicate chain line beneath, and the thin outline of the amber crystal. Emma had told her that it was a rare magical item. What is its magic, she wondered? Lightning flashed in the approaching bank of storm clouds, followed by a distant rumble. Little Peter squinted at the sky. ‘Will there be a storm?’
‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘We’d better put the animals in the barn.’ The rains were coming and she was excited because the hard field would soften for the first run of the plough.
The wind howled through the trees. Lightning flashed. Thunder rolled across the valley. Meg lashed the door to the grain shed to stop it banging and struggled towards the house, squinting to make her way through the gloom. It was still late afternoon, but the storm clouds had brought a heavy darkness. She’d helped other villagers herd livestock to shelter, but many of the animals that grazed on the common were still loose. Another lightning strike almost blinded her and the thunderous boom vibrated through the earth. With a sharp crack, to Meg’s dismay, the gum tree near the grain shed toppled and a limb tore away a small segment of the thatch roof as the falling trunk crushed a trough. Caught between anger that the tree had wrecked the roof, and relief that it hadn’t collapsed completely onto the shed, she clenched her fists as another flash of lightning lit the farm like daylight. A heavy raindrop hit her forearm. Another thudded against the ground. And another. The drought-breaking rains had come.
Inside the house, her mother was placing pots where the rain was already dripping through the thatched roof while her brothers were pressing their faces against the wooden shutters, watching the rain in the bursts of lightning. Sunfire was curled before the fireplace. ‘The wells will be full again,’ Dawn said, as she adjusted a pot to catch the raindrops. ‘Are all the animals under shelter?’
‘All I could find,’ Meg replied, shaking out her red hair. The rain was thundering against the roof, new leaks springing through the thatch, sending Dawn scurrying for more containers. And then Meg remembered the horse. ‘There’s one more I have to check!’ she yelled, heading for the door.
Dawn stared in disbelief. ‘You can’t go out in this!’
‘I have to!’ Meg yelled. She unhooked her father’s oilskin coat from the pegs by the door. ‘It’s the horse!’
‘It’ll fend for itself!’ Dawn yelled. ‘Don’t be stupid!’
Meg swung the door open and plunged into the rain. Dawn stared after her daughter disappearing into the torrent. When Sunfire rose and trotted forward, Dawn ordered ‘No!’ and closed the door. The dingo looked up inquisitively, sniffed the air, and sank to wait for Meg’s return.
It’s like swimming, Meg decided as she pushed through the rain. The harsh wind brought the rain slicing in at a sharp angle, squeezing through her coat’s narrow gaps, and the ground underfoot was treacherously muddy. She cursed herself for leaving the horse out in the storm. White lightnin
g gave her an instant to orient, and she headed into the bush in the direction of the gully where Nightwind was hidden.
As good as her sense of direction normally was, she was quickly lost in the wild darkness and lashing rain. She blundered blindly into the ragged mallee bushes, scratched her face on an unseen branch, and slipped down the slope of a small hollow, landing on her backside in oozing slurry. Cold water and mud ran under her coat and soaked her trousers and tunic. A jagged lightning fork revealed that she’d missed the gully entrance by more than a hundred paces, but the silvery instant reoriented her.
She missed the horse several times, twice stumbling into the raging but shallow creek waters that had leapt to life with the storm. When a flash of lightning finally exposed him, Nightwind was cowering under a gum tree, soaked from the rain and terrified by the howling wind and rabid lightning. ‘I’m sorry,’ she cried, as she tried to coax the frightened horse towards her, ‘I’ll take you back to shelter,’ but the horse shied from her reach. In desperation, she grabbed at the bridle. Startled, Nightwind reared defensively and lashed out, striking Meg solidly on the forehead with a flailing hoof. Clutching her head, she staggered three paces back in shock, and collapsed.
The bright light stunned her. She took a long time to adjust to it, until she realised she was staring directly into the sun. She looked away, to discover that she stood on a vast plain of grey dust under a sharp blue and utterly cloudless sky. Scattered randomly across the plain were twisted, angular leafless trees, white as if scorched by great heat. The intensity of the light and colours hurt her eyes. Her feet were immersed in fine grey dust. This was a place that had not seen the quenching and rejuvenating touch of rain for an immeasurable time. And then she heard the laughter—a deep, resonating, chilling sound that made the hair on her neck rise. Everywhere she could only see the endless sky and plain and white trees, no other sign of life, and the bodiless laughter echoed through her soul, extinguishing hope.
And then the scene morphed into a bitterly frosty night, and she was standing on battlements, gazing down on a dark sea of soldiers pocked by fires and torchlight. She was conscious of people beside her on the battlements, people she knew were her family but not her current family. When she raised her hands before her eyes she saw that they were wrinkled and mottled, the hands of an old woman, hands like Emma’s hands, worn by time, and the people beside her were her grandchildren. She knew all this, just as she knew that she was going to die.
‘Can you hear me?’ A shadow blotted the light. Meg squinted. A face formed. A man’s face. She sensed rather than saw details, but something in the shadowy vision told her he was young and handsome. ‘Take it easy. You’ve had a very nasty blow.’ She went to sit up, but a sudden throbbing headache held her down. She groaned. ‘I know how it must feel,’ said the man. ‘I’ve been knocked out twice.’ His voice was melodious and strong. She squinted against the light, but all she could make out were his blond locks and square shoulders. A hand pressed under her neck to cradle her head. ‘Here. Slowly. Drink this.’ A vessel touched her lips. Water. She was thirsty. ‘Not too quickly,’ he warned, and he lowered her head gently. She wanted to ask questions, but her head hurt too much and she was terribly, terribly tired. She closed her eyes.
Dragons weren’t real. She knew this as she knew the seasons. Yet she was standing in a crowd of terrified people milling in the courtyard of a castle, fires raging, bodies scattered through rubble, staring up at a warrior who’d mounted the battlements and was standing alone, sword burning with a fierce white light, waiting for the dragon to wheel and come again to attack the castle. And the massive creature flashed into vision, black wings like a fruit bat, eagle-like talons extended to snatch the warrior from his perch. And the warrior swung his sword with precise ease, and light exploded as the blade sliced through the dragon’s leg.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘Can you hear me, Meg?’
She opened her eyes gingerly to find that the light had changed. It was dull and this time she was staring up at a thatched ceiling with dark wooden rafters. Strips of daylight peeped through gaps in the thatching. ‘Mum, she’s awake!’ She recognised Daryn’s voice. Then his face appeared.
‘Stand back a little,’ Dawn ordered. Daryn’s smiling face withdrew and was replaced with Dawn’s serious expression. ‘Can you hear me, Meg?’
‘Yes,’ she answered.
‘You’re a very lucky girl. Horseman Farrier found you and the horse. He brought you back. Why did you do that?’
‘Is Nightwind all right?’
‘The horse is fine, a few cuts.’
She closed her eyes again. Although her mother was still talking, Meg wasn’t concentrating on the words. Horseman Farrier found her. But the man who’d given her water wasn’t Horseman Farrier. She was sure of that.
Though she’d never seen the Queen, she knew she was standing before her, and all of her courtiers. The woman was as old as Meg’s mother, and she was dressed in golden robes and a green cape adorned her shoulders. Her hair was gold, peppered with multicoloured gems. She was smiling, as if she was pleased to see Meg. Then her head rolled off, and so did the heads of everyone around her.
The rain came and went in six days, filling the wells, and lifting the river until it crept over its banks to flood the village market for a morning. Meg’s concussion eased, but she was as surprised as her mother at how the heavy bruising and the cut on her forehead healed and vanished within a day. ‘It mustn’t have been anywhere near as nasty as it first looked,’ Dawn decided as she wiped the eucalyptus healing ointment she’d bought from Emma on Meg’s skin.
‘Magic in Emma’s ointment,’ said Meg facetiously, but her inner mind questioned her disbelief.
‘It must be,’ Dawn agreed. ‘She knows more than we can ever hope to understand.’
‘I don’t feel sick anymore. I think I should get the plough into the soil,’ Meg suggested. ‘Where are Daryn and Mykel?’
‘Daryn is already turning the soil. He’s hitched the bullock by himself. You can rest.’
‘But I feel normal.’ Meg threw back the yellow blanket, climbed out of her bed and stretched.
‘You have the blessing of Jarudha on you to have recovered so quickly,’ her mother remarked.
Meg snorted and laughed. ‘Oh, sometimes you make crazy comments. Since when have you been religious?’
‘I’ve always believed in Jarudha,’ Dawn replied, smiling. ‘Faith is free and private.’
‘But you’ve never said anything to me.’
‘That’s because you’d never listen, girl.’
‘I might.’
Mother and daughter laughed. ‘I think you should rest for at least another day,’ Dawn advised. ‘Head injuries can be very unpredictable. It’s still raining on and off.’
‘At least let me help with some cooking.’
Dawn stared at her daughter, and giggled like a little girl. ‘That blow to your head must have knocked some sense into you.’
Meg poked out her tongue. ‘I still won’t wear a dress, so don’t get too many ideas.’
While the rains passed during the ensuing days, mother and daughter shared time cleaning and cooking and feeding the two bigger boys, who’d decided that they could do the heavier duties while the river was high and flowing quickly and fishing was too dangerous. Meg tended to Nightwind whenever she could go outside, using Emma’s healing ointment on the horse’s cuts. ‘You’re collecting an impressive set of scars,’ she said, as she brushed his grey coat one afternoon, under the cloudy sky.
‘He’s lucky he has you to care for him.’ Several paces away was a man dressed in a leaf-green tunic and light earth-brown trousers, with a khaki raincoat draped over his shoulders to keep off the light misty rain.
‘Who are you?’ she asked.
‘My name is Treasure,’ he replied in a formal manner. He bowed, and advanced a step. ‘I’m sorry to intrude on you, but my horse has injured his fetlock and I was hoping someone in yo
ur village had something I could use to heal him.’
He was handsome. His hair was light blond, and it hung down across his finely chiselled features. She’d never seen hair so light. ‘Are you a soldier?’ she asked warily.
He hesitated, and glanced beyond Meg in the direction of her home. ‘I am,’ he said.
‘Where are the others?’
‘Others?’
‘Others. The army.’
Treasure smiled. ‘Oh. No. See, I’m a scout. I’m sent to check things out before the army arrives.’
‘Then why were the others here a few days ago?’
The stranger was on guard. ‘How many others?’
‘A dozen.’
‘Where did they go?’
‘I’m not sure. I think they rode south. I thought if you’re a soldier that you’d know that.’
‘Towards The Whispering Forest?’
‘I’ve never heard of it.’
‘That’s where they would be heading,’ Treasure decided, as if for his own benefit. ‘Were they the Queen’s soldiers?’
‘They wore the golden serpent,’ she replied. He stepped back a pace and looked around, as if he was uncertain of his situation, and something stirred her memory. ‘Why are you so nervous?’ she asked.
‘I’m not meant to be seen by anyone. That’s what being a scout is about. Not even my own army is meant to know where I am, or to see me.’
‘That’s weird. How do you fight if no one sees you?’
‘I only talk to my superiors. I tell them what I’ve seen, and then they make their orders based on what I tell them.’
‘Do you fight?’
‘Yes. When I’m needed.’
His voice was familiar. ‘Did you find me in the gully?’
Treasure’s face creased into a warm smile. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Did you help Horseman bring me home?’
The Amber Legacy Page 7
