Haven (War of the Princes) (11 page)

           
He released my hand and put his back against the dead tree, sliding down to sit.

           
“Now, with all that you have left,” Rune Thayer implored me. “Get away from here.” He produced a tube from one of the pockets in his trousers and pulled the flare so that an unnaturally red flame shot high into the air, arched, and landed just outside of our circle of trees. “Get home. Run if you have to. And if you want to live a long and happy life, forget how you came here and that you ever knew me.”

           
He was frightening me. The way he was talking reminded me of exactly how dangerous my circumstances were, especially considering I knew nothing about his world. Another part of me felt offended and defiant. We didn’t know each other very well, but what if I still wanted to know him? What if I still wanted to be his friend? I didn’t move.

           
“Go!” he snapped at me and I jumped a little, shocked by the biting tone of the order. This was the older Rune speaking. The difference was like night and day. “Go home,” he added more softly, almost pleading.

           
Thinking about the light on in my living room and my stepmother’s cold finger sandwiches that were waiting for me on the kitchen counter, I took a few steps back.

           
He stared at me, leaned his head against the back of the tree, and closed his eyes when he saw that I really was leaving.

           
It didn’t feel right to abandon someone as injured as him in the cold, open wilderness. Back home, that would be begging for a bear attack. Not to mention, the only light he had was the pale red of the flare. I had a sick feeling in my stomach, but I kept walking away... until I saw it.

           
Just up ahead, something stared at me, barely within reach of the lantern light.

           
It looked pale in contrast to the darkness, its wide black mouth open and gasping in its breaths as it faced me. It took me a split second to recognize that it had the head of an eel and the body of a dog, only it was much bigger. I swallowed a scream and felt my heart slam to a stop, and it was gone.

There was no sound, nothing between me and the cave in the distance.

It had vanished.

           
I knew I saw something. I wished I didn’t.

           
Now more than ever, I wanted to be home. If only I could magically appear in
Rivermarch
and skip all of the things in between.

           
Involuntarily, my steps carried me backward, away from the swift and silent thing I’d seen in the night, until I had returned to Rune and the dead tree.

           
I opened my mouth to tell him what I saw, but he was on the ground shaking. His eyes had rolled back and
froth
edged his mouth. He was having a seizure. I had known a girl in middle school who suffered from them, so it wasn’t the first time I’d seen it, but it frightened me. Here was the only person I knew on the outside of the world, seizing up and maybe dying, after all my efforts to save him. I was worried about myself and worried about him.

If this attack was because of the infection in his arm, it was very, very bad news.

           
By the time I reached his side it had stopped, and he lay there limp on the ground. He was still breathing and he hadn’t bitten his tongue, so I was relieved, but he also didn’t reawaken.

           
I didn’t know what to do.

           
All of my thoughts about home, helping Rune, and seeing a monster in the dark came to a screaming halt when I heard movement in the grass all around us.

           
We weren’t alone.

Chapter 12: Sounds In The Brush

           
Until that moment in my life, fear had never boasted such a hold on me. I could hear several things moving toward us through the underbrush and my imagination was free to declare itself superior to my senses. I was a victim of the nightmarish conclusions that I formed, and since the sounds were coming from all around, I couldn’t even run away. All I could do was crouch protectively and helplessly over Rune.

           
I wished I could have disappeared into the grass or been home in bed where things were safe and familiar. For a moment, as I spun, turning to face each noise, I wondered if I was going to die.

           
The words written on the wall by the aquamarine pool came back to me with impeccable clarity.

           
Forms broke into the light and I should have been relieved, but I wasn’t. They were horses, not the burly mountain stock I was accustomed to seeing, but long legged, wiry muscled beasts with their proud heads held high. They stamped and snorted, pinning their ears as they bore forward the riders on their backs.

           
I never had a real reason to fear another human being. As a child, running barefoot through the forests and pretending life was more dramatic than it really was, I had enjoyed hiding and fleeing from pretend intruders. When I was eleven I got into a wrestling match with a boy at school. Even after being pushed into the river by Calvin, I knew that none of those people would really hurt me.

           
There, in the strangeness of an unknown world, my instincts cried out in alarm, but I clung to my naiveté, forcing myself to believe nothing could actually happen to me.

           
I counted seven riders: six men and one woman. They were all dressed in gray and tan leather armor, with mechanized crossbows, copper pistols, knives and swords strapped to their waists and saddles.

Haven Valley may have been peaceful, but weapons were still made and used for hunting, and there had even been a controversial fencing class at my school for a while. I knew what these things were when I saw them hanging in their holsters, and I knew what it meant when the weapons were drawn at the sight of me.

“That’s Thayer alright,” an old bearded man said, kicking his horse a stride nearer.

“But who’s the creature beside him?” the woman rider demanded coldly. In the dim light, I thought I could see scars running across her face.

They all had the same unusual accent as Rune. It was logical. I was in a completely unfamiliar place, but the accents added to my foreboding feeling of displacement.

“Back away from the body, girl,” the old man ordered me, pointing his mechanized crossbow directly at my chest.

I felt like I had lost my ability to breathe. I was like a hare, knowing that I had been spotted by a wolf, wide-eyed and frozen.

“Stand up and move away from the body,” the old man repeated in a tone more commanding than the last.

The body? Could they have thought that Rune was dead?

“He’s still alive,” was all I managed to say as I lifted from my crouch and skittered back a step. I was already thinking about the fastest path to escape back to the cave. With my “luck” I could make it there in less than five minutes. They’d take Rune and I’d leave, simple as that. I’d be home in less than an hour and have a story to tell that no one would believe.

“Axton,” the old man barked. “Do you know this girl?”

I heard movement behind me and spun to see a square, solid palomino horse come a little farther into the light. I expected the rider to be someone as rough as the gritty old man or the woman with the scarred face.

I was completely unprepared for what I saw when the rider who answered to Axton came closer to get a look at me. He was young, easily the youngest of the group, with blonde hair that brushed his shoulders, framing the most beautiful face I had ever seen. His fine, symmetrical features were just masculine enough to remind me very clearly that he didn’t share my gender. If they were standing beside one another, he would have made the thuggishly handsome Sterling Mason look like a brute in comparison to his perfection. It was a very striking first impression, and I gaped in spite of my situation.

           
I flushed instantly under Axton’s scrutiny, wildly unprepared to see someone so attractive.

It didn’t escape me that we were probably close enough in age that he would know me if we were from the same town. And he answered the way I knew he would. “I’ve never seen her before.”

“Look at that coat,” someone else said, and I took the opportunity to break eye contact with Axton. The other speaker was a rugged, middle-aged man with a crossbow aimed at my head. “Unusual tailoring isn’t it?”

           
“Could be
Eastwater
. She might be a spy,” someone suggested.

           
“Isn’t the first order of a spy to blend in?” Axton said in a droll tone.

           
“Why take any chances?” the woman said.

           
“I’m not a spy,” I said meekly. “Rune is very badly injured, I helped him get here, and I’d just like to go home.”

           
I was being honest. I didn’t see any reason why I wouldn’t be allowed to turn and walk away from them, but they held their circle around me.

           
“Listen to her accent… what is that?” someone asked.

           
“Do I look like a cultured enough ‘gent to have left the region?
Idiot
,” another soldier responded. “Axton, do you know it?”

           
The beautiful young man stared at me, leaning casually forward over his saddle. “Never heard it before.”

           
The old man squinted at me and set his jaw. “Collect her.”

           
The words rang in my ears, hardly taking any meaning. It wasn’t until I saw the horses closing in on me from all sides that I understood. They weren’t letting me go.

           
I cried the name of the only person I knew who might be my friend. “Rune!” But he lay still.

           
Seeing and hearing them all press toward me in unison was like a trigger for my newly discovered claustrophobia. I sucked fast breaths through my mouth and nose in panic, and bolted for the nearest opening between horses, abandoning the lantern for the darkness of the sparse wood.

           
I was no match for the horses, and knew it, but I had to try. They intercepted my path, flanking and cornering me until I was no farther than I’d started off. Attempting to dart past them didn’t do any good. They were too many. Finally, my knees buckled and I sank into the tall grass, overcome by exhaustion.
 

           
I was captured.

Chapter 13: Breakwater

Being taken away was surreal at first. I felt strangely numb as they bound my hands in front of me and forced me to sit astride a tall chestnut gelding with the scar-faced woman. Maybe they thought it was a courtesy to seat me with someone of the same gender, but she was meaner than the men she rode with.

Someone attended to Rune, announcing that he was still alive. It was as though no one had listened to a word I said. I was relieved to see that they didn’t treat him with the same mistrustful hostility as they did me. A spare horse was brought forward and he was bound to the saddle so that he wouldn’t fall. The old bearded man took charge of leading his horse.

Looking at Rune, slumped over his saddle, barely alive, it struck me what a fool I’d been. I had blundered into risking my life over a person I hardly knew. My compassion for the injured was suddenly small beside my desire for self-preservation. What was I thinking?
 
I should have first blamed the curiosity that drove me to search for a way out of Haven Valley. I should have stopped at the cemetery, or the tomb, or the warnings on the wall, or the aquamarine pool. Who would submerge themselves into a pond with dry water anyway? Was I insane? Why couldn’t I have stopped there?

Why did I jump off of that cliff?

Why did I help Rune?

A very subtle pang of guilt stabbed at me when I remembered his helplessness, how in his fevered state he kept thinking that I was a ghost or an angel. He even thanked me for speaking to him like a person... for acting like a friend.

But what good would it do? It might be too late for him, and there I was, being abducted in a world no one had seen in seven hundred years.

The flare was stamped out, a rider was sent up ahead and another behind to scout. The lantern Rune had given me was extinguished, and we were enveloped in darkness that was flawed by a great many stars. The riders pulled on goggles that glowed dimly through blue, green, or yellow lenses. I guessed that they allowed the wearer to see in the dark, because none of the riders carried lights.

I couldn’t see anything but black shapes obscuring the stars as we rode through the trees at a purposeful canter. There was no color in this outside world, only night, and there were no friends, only strangers.