Tarah Woodblade (33 page)

“Yes, sir,” she said, relieved. This was true progress.

They mounted up and headed back to the last point where they’d seen tracks the day before. Once they reached the spot, they left the horses with one of the dwarves and continued on foot. The tracks continued westward towards the Wide River. Tarah could see the sun glinting on the waters at the horizon line.

It was mid-morning when Mel made his first move. She was inspecting a track and he snuck up on her. Tarah was ready. She whipped her staff out behind her, smacking the back of his hand.

“Gah! Dag-gum biscuit-breaker!” He jumped up and down, shaking his hand vigorously.

“What’s that?” Leroy called.

“Nothin’!” Mel said, shooting Tarah a glare.

He left for awhile, but came back again just after noon. He reached out and she smacked his hand aside again.

“Ow! You.” He clutched his hand and gave her an evil glare.

“Keep your dirty fingers away from me, Mel,” she said.

“Don’t you play like that with me,” he sneered. “Ever’body knows you like the touch of a dwarf.”

“Oh I do.” She leaned towards him. “But you’re too ugly to be a dwarf. I’d say you’re more like a kobald.”

Mel snarled and reached into the holster at his side. He drew his paralyzing rod, but Tarah was ready. Her staff whipped across, knocking the rod from his hand. Then she brought in the other end and cracked him in the side of the head, knocking him down.

The blow was hard. A human would have been rendered unconscious. Dwarves were tougher. He bounded back up, holding the side of his head where a knot was beginning to form.

He reached back and grabbed the hilt of the Ramsetter. His arms weren’t as long as Djeri’s. He had to pull part of it out, then grasp the blade and draw it the rest of the way.

“You just try coming at me with my papa’s sword, you lily-livered nose-farmer!” Tarah said, twirling her staff.

He swung the sword in an overhand chop. Tarah knocked the blade to the side with one end of the staff and brought the other end around to smack him on the side of the head again, just one inch above the last blow.

Mel stumbled back, howling.

“What the hell is goin’ on here?” Donjon yelled, approaching them from a few yards away. All of the trackers closed in.

“She attacked me, boss!” Mel said. “Right outta nowhere. Look at my head.”

“That’s absurd! He was getting all handsy again,” Tarah said.

Donjon focused on Mel. “This ain’t the first time I told you, boy!”

“C’mon, she’s lying. I’d never-!”

“Listen here, you corn-jigger!” Donjon spat, pointing one thick finger at the dwarf’s chest. “We all seen it. If’n you can’t keep your stinkin’ hands off her, I’ll tell everbody what a big humie you are.”

Mel looked at the others, his eyes wide.  “But boss, I ain’t no humie!”

“That includes my daddy and Aunt Maggie, you clear?” Donjon warned.

Mel’s face paled. “Yer gonna take her side against mine? A stinkin’ lyin’ girl?”

“I ain’t lying!” Tarah said.

“You just get, Woodblade!” Donjon snapped. “Go back to yer trackin’ while I finish talkin’ to my boy, here.”

“Yes sir,” she said and turned away. She felt pretty good about how that had gone down. Now she just had to worry about the reprisal she knew would come. Tarah followed the rogue horse’s tracks as they continued towards the shoreline, mulling ways to protect herself and Djeri.

Djeri would have to see if there was a way he could keep an eye on Neddy during the day. Then at night, they would just have to take turns on watch. It would be difficult because during the night was their only time to plan. As it was, they barely got enough sleep to make it through the day.

Tarah stopped in surprise. The tracks had disappeared.

She backtracked for a few yards and looked again. The ground had gone fairly hard because of the cold but the beast was so heavy she could make out each print clearly even through the light skiff of snow on the ground. Rufus had come this way and left one last track at the edge of the grass line. Beyond that was an empty stretch of sand that turned to pebbles just before the waterline.

Tarah knelt down and touched the track. As usual, she felt only the strong impression that he was heading forward with strong purpose and confidence. There was no sign that he intended to stop.

She looked at the swift moving water and the big chunks of ice that sped by like large paving stones. Surely Rufus hadn’t entered the water. Of course not. The river was so wide here, she could barely see the far bank. Besides, there were no tracks in the sand to show it.

Nevertheless, she followed the path of the rogue horse’s last steps straight forward as if he had continued down to the water. Nope. There was nothing. Not even the barest indentation in the sand. Tarah stepped onto the pebbles and shook her head as she approached the water’s edge. This was ridiculous. She was going to have to backtrack. Maybe the mysterious rider had fooled them. Maybe he . . .

There at the waterline, in a small patch of mud, was a single human footprint and it was barefoot.

Tarah crouched next to it. What was a footprint like that doing there? And at this time of year? She reached down and touched the print.

For a moment the world stopped. This wasn’t like one of the dwarves’ paralyzing spells. This was more. Everything paused as if time were frozen. The water wasn’t moving. Her very heartbeat stopped.

Tarah felt a warmth on her shoulder as if someone placed their hand there. She heard a voice whisper in her ear; a masculine voice, deep and clear. She heard it audibly, yet at the same time in her mind as well.

“
Take them across the river
.”

Tarah gasped as the water sped past her once more. She looked around, but no one was there. She touched the track again, but this time there was nothing. Nothing at all as if there were no memory attached to it whatsoever.

What had just happened? The experience had been unlike anything she had felt from a track before. That hadn’t been a memory. It hadn’t been a single thought. It was a message and it was meant just for her. Tarah felt a chill that went beyond the cold air.

Whoever had left the message knew about her magic, knew about the staff. Who could it be? No one knew. No one but Djeri and her Grampa. She thought back to the voice and tried to grasp the tone. Had it been at all familiar? But the memory had already begun to fade. Only the message remained.

“Take them across the river,” she whispered. There was only one answer. It had to be the mysterious rider. Somehow he had known they were following.

“Hey, Woodblade!” came Donjon’s voice.

She stood and casually stepped on the print as she turned to face him. The dwarves were at the edge of the grass line looking at Rufus’ last print. She leaned her weight on that foot and felt her boot sink slowly into the half-frozen mud, destroying the track. “Yeah?”

The black-mustached dwarf was glaring. “Get over here!”

Tarah made a show of taking a wide step, as if over an invisible set of tracks, and walked towards him. He looked angry about the way the rogue horse’s tracks had disappeared. Donjon took a few steps onto the sand to meet her. She needed to diffuse his anger a bit if she was going to convince them. Tarah decided to start with some gratitude.

Softly, she said, “Donjon, thank you for helping me back there. I-.”

Donjon grabbed the front of her armor and jerked her down to meet him eye-to eye. “Don’t give me no gratefulness, girl. I didn’t do that ‘cause I care one whit about you.” His lit cigar illuminated the shadows under his hat, revealing eyes filled with anger and disgust. “I just can’t stand the thought of any of my boys lookin’ at yer ugly human face that way. If you wasn’t such a good tracker, I would’ve slit yer throat weeks ago. You hear me?”

The other dwarves were staring at her, some of them nodding in agreement. Tarah grit her teeth and clutched her staff tightly to keep her hands from trembling with anger.

Keep a level head,
warned Grampa Rolf.

“I hear you, Donjon,” she said slowly. “Did you want me to tell you what I think about the tracks?”

He released her armor and folded his arms. “Tell me.”

“The rogue is gone. He’s crossed the river,” she said.

“No way!” said Leroy. “It’s too friggin’ cold.  It probly just backtracked a ways.”

“What are you talking about? The tracks end right at the water,” she said, pointing at that invisible line.

The trackers looked at each other, frowning. Mel squatted by the last track and peered across the sand with his well-trained eyes. “I don’t see nothin’!”

“It backtracked I tell you,” Leroy said.

“If it did, you would’ve seen it,” Tarah said. “What do you think the beast did, step backwards perfectly in its own tracks? It’s a horse, not an elf. Anyways, its tracks are right here in the sand plain as day.”

“I don’t see nothin’ either,” said Donjon.

Show off. Convince ‘em Tarah Woodblade knows best
, said her grampa’s voice.

“The sand was mostly frozen when it made the tracks, that’s why they’re so light,” she said.

“Then how come the tracks in the grass are so deep?” asked Mel.

“Look, the tracks at the edge there are about four days old, would you agree?” she asked. They nodded. “Well we had a cold one that night, remember?”

They shrugged.

“Well I’ve lived here in Dremaldria all my life and I can tell you that the Wide River gets a stiff wind on cold nights in the winter. The grass will break some of the wind so the ground don’t freeze as hard, but the sand becomes hard as rock,” Tarah explained.

“Yeah, well I still don’t see no tracks!” Leroy said.

She had hoped it wouldn’t be this difficult. “Look, I know you dwarfs are all way more experienced than I am. I may seem like just a baby compared to you. But we’ve been tracking together for near a month now. You’ve seen what I can do. I’ve found tracks that no one else could and I tell you I see the durn rogue’s tracks going all the way down to the water.”

“You know I think I might see ‘em too,” said one of the other trackers. He was the oldest of the dwarves, more experienced than the rest of them, but Tarah had watched him track. He tried to hide it from the others, but his eyesight was fading.

Donjon shrugged. “Okay, so it went down to the water. But there’s no way it crossed. The durn thing would freeze to death ‘fore he got half way.”

“Then it’s dead. And here we tracked it all this way.” Tarah shook her head sadly. “I dunno though. He is a rogue horse after all. Maybe he’s one of the kind that can take it. He loves the cold. You saw from his tracks how much he likes playing in the snow.”

A few of them nodded and she could see that she was winning them over. “You know, Filgren is just a couple miles south from here. There’s ferries there that can take us across. Then we can head back north along the coast and pick up its tracks again.” Donjon narrowed his eyes at her and she paused, looking abashed. “Of course it’s your call, Donjon, sir. I wasn’t trying to talk out of place.”

“She’s talking too sweet to you,” Mel said suspiciously.

“Shut up,” Donjon said. “All of you, split up. Head up and down the bank a ways. Make sure she’s right and there ain’t no more tracks.”

“Yes, boss,” Leroy said.

As the trackers scattered, Donjon reached into a satchel at his waist and pulled out the message stone that he used to communicate with Shade when they were out of camp. It was a long thin piece of rock that he wrote on with a piece of wood. He started to write a message, then paused and cocked his head in Tarah’s direction.

“You better be right, girl. ‘Cause if we cross this thing and don’t find no tracks on the far side, I’m paralyzin’ yer arse and tossin’ you in the water.”

Tarah nodded. She hoped that trusting this mysterious rider was the right thing to do.

Chapter Seventeen

Filgren was a prosperous city, not so large as Sampo, but a major stopping place for people traveling from Dremaldria to Razbeck. The ferries were run by the Roma Family, one of Dremaldria’s high noble houses, and they levied a tidy fee for transport.

Shade rode into Filgren alone to make the arrangements. Getting the band across the river was going to be more difficult than usual. Most times of the year the ferries worked all day long, but usually closed down when the ice chunks were this large. The boats were made to be tough, but an impact at just the right spot could cause a lot of damage.

In addition, the noble family could not be seen making such a dangerous exception for a troupe of dwarves with handlebar mustaches. Dwarf smugglers were in ill favor with the capitol at the moment. Lord Commander Demetrius had passed a law against doing business with them in any form.

While Shade made his case with the Romas, the rest of the camp traveled down the river bank and stopped just outside of the nearest farm. Tarah updated Djeri on the situation while they waited. Once again, he was impressed by her ability to think on her feet. The message she had received was strange, though. How could the rider have known such a message would work?

Donjon went through three cigars pacing back and forth as he waited for Shade’s go ahead. The boss was in a foul mood, berating anyone and everyone he came across. Peggy was slapped across the face when she asked if they should start cooking dinner.

“Donjon takes this hunt personally,” Djeri said to Tarah as they watched Peggy walk by with a glower.

“I’ve noticed,” Tarah said.

“I was talking to Biff today and I think I know why,” Djeri added with a whisper. They were standing next to Neddy, but some of the other dwarves were just yards away and they were watching.

Tarah stepped closer to Djeri and put her arm around his shoulders just as a lover should. She whispered back, “What did you learn?”

“Donjon’s family is familiar with this rogue horse. They had captured it once before, but it escaped.” he replied. “Thing is, they already had it sold to a gnome scholar at the time and it gave the clan a black eye when they couldn’t deliver.”