The Farwalker's Quest (12 page)

Three days passed in a pattern of footsore days and uncomfortable nights. Ariel struggled to keep up with the men's longer strides. Orion bore her along with their goods every afternoon once her tired legs began failing.

The fourth morning, her captors led her up a ravine lined with spooky beech trees cloaked with black fungus. Small patches of their pale bark gleamed through like eyes, staring and hostile. As the sun heated the day, hornets crawled over the fungus, which must have been sweet. When the trio stopped for what Ariel called back-turning, she slipped cautiously behind a tree. The hornets ignored her.

Scarl held her tether and awaited her on the other side of the tree. Farther away, Elbert minded Orion and amused himself with shameful songs. If a classmate had sung such words, Ariel might have laughed, but in Elbert's bass tones they were
only revolting. She tried to fill her ears with other songs from inside.

Orion decided his back itched. Shuffling beneath a low tree branch, he rocked, trying to reach just the right spot.

“Don't let him scrape off that pack,” Scarl warned Elbert.

Just then one of Orion's hooves broke through the soil near the tree's trunk. A river of hornets flowed out. With their den breached, they rushed into battle, filling the air with black, droning bodies.

The horse reared and bucked, thrashing its tail. Elbert launched into similar motions. Swearing, he jumped for Orion's bridle before the horse bolted.

“Help me keep him!” he shouted.

Scarl threw Ariel's leash over a branch and he, too, lunged after the horse.

Ariel took only a second to think. She was no horse to be fooled by a rope that was looped but not tied. Batting her hands at hornets, she tugged the leash free, backed a few steps, and turned to run for her life.

The steep, narrow ravine provided few routes for escape. She darted back the way they had come, branches slapping her face.

Even beset by hornets and a mad horse, her captors weren't sluggish. Their shouts followed her quickly.

“I've got the horse, for the love of all sinners—get her!” Elbert's voice trembled with rage.

Feet thumped behind her. Ariel raced down the ravine, scrambling over tree roots and rocks. She was nimbler than Scarl, if not faster, and she heard him curse and grunt as he worked to catch her.

But the rope, still tied to her wrists, worked for its master.
She should have drawn in its end before running. Catching between boulders, her leash yanked her up short and right off her feet. She slammed into the ground.

Scarl was on her in a thrice. Grabbing at her sweater and one arm, he jerked her bodily into the air and upright. Ariel, who had sealed her lips against so much anguish already, burst into wails.

Scarl set her onto her feet long enough only to slap her so sharply across the face that she fell down again. Sobbing too hard to draw breath, she lay there, a stone cutting into her chin.

“Foolish girl!” he hissed. “Break a leg, crack your head, or if Elbert had caught you—! And where would you go.” It wasn't a question. He stood over her, his breath raspy.

Days of pent-up fear, humiliation, and anger poured out in her tears. Pains in her body howled their presence. The greater pains in her soul immobilized her.

After a few minutes, Scarl raised her. When her legs wouldn't hold her, he slung her over his shoulder and picked a way back up their path. She hung limp, crushed at her belly and sobbing. Blood from the gouge on her chin dribbled down the Finder's coat.

Elbert met them, the glower on his face made more ugly by swelling.

“Did you beat her enough?”

“You want a go?” Scarl asked. Ariel choked. Scarl's blow had been bad enough. Fists as powerful as Elbert's could kill her.

A chill voice in her mind wondered if that might be best.

Scarl did not lower her from his shoulder, however. Slapping a persistent hornet, Elbert turned and stalked onward.

“I'll save it for later,” he growled.

They traveled at least half a mile while the skittish horse calmed enough so that Scarl might safely shift Ariel to horseback. All the while, some animal part of her brain worked on a puzzle. By the time Scarl slung her sideways over Orion's back, she felt ready to stop weeping. Being lashed there like a corpse didn't feel good, but she didn't mind hiding her face against the warm, musky ribs.

She'd seen something in the rocks while she'd lain there, bleeding. In the agony of her recapture, she had not immediately registered anything out of place. Now, though, desperation pumped the knowledge from the underside of her mind to the top.

An apple core had been dropped in the rocks. It rested in a crevice, hidden except to a face very close, as hers had been. The flesh on the core had not yet turned brown.

Whoever had dropped it could not be far away. It could have been a stranger coming this way by chance, but not likely. Ariel knew her rescuers had finally come. She had to be ready.

Ariel endured two more anxious days, primed for an ambush of rescuing heroes, while her captors hauled her through flowerspecked meadows and an alpine pass. As the trio trudged over its crest, she gazed farther up toward snowy peaks and a sweep of what looked like white taffy pulled and stretched between mountains.

“Frozen river,” Scarl said, noting her interest. “Ice that moves. If we were closer, you could hear it groan and break off at the end—slabs so big they would crush any house.”

“Honestly, Scarl?” Elbert asked. “You've seen this before? I had no idea how well traveled you are.” Ariel thought him sincere until Scarl threw an obscene gesture in reply.

Elbert chortled. “No, no, tell us more, wise one. Give the princess a thrill!”

Deafening her ears, Ariel bitterly remembered telling Zeke of foreign things she might see on her trip. Even now she could wonder at a frozen river, but that excitement felt frozen, too, locked in the ice crushing her heart. Silently she pleaded for her rescuers to hurry and melt it.

To her relief, since her attempt to escape she had not received another blow. Elbert's temper had faded, and no one had spoken again of her flight. Yet Scarl allowed her little rest and no privacy now, dragging her along every time he tended the horse or collected wood for a fire.

The extra movement tormented Ariel's feet. Stinging blisters rose on both heels, and even wearing two pairs of socks barely helped. Then a breakfast of fried brook fish gave her an idea.

Just before they started off that morning, Scarl bent to adjust the rope knotted at her wrists. He sniffed. His nose wrinkled.

“Did you put fish in your pockets?” he asked.

“No.” Afraid he'd search her, she added, “I remembered the Fishers put fish oil on blisters. And I have a lot. So I rubbed the greasy bits of my breakfast on my feet.”

His lips squashed a smile. “Clever. You may make a Farwalker yet.”

She scowled. They'd already walked plenty far. “What does that mean?”

Tensing, Scarl straightened and spun her shoulder. “Unless you want that rope tighter, hush up and let's go.”

As they descended from the pass that day, Ariel picked apart his odd comment. She realized she'd heard the term Farwalker before. One of the Storian's tales about the Blind War had included a song. It recounted how the people left after the war had put the world back together again. Forced to get along without sight, they honed senses they hadn't needed or heeded until they went blind. Tree-Singers began talking to trees then, and Kincallers made friends with the creatures of forest and field. Others discovered they could still find things, even blind,
if they sought with some previously untapped part of their minds. Together, using skills they might once have called magic, the remaining few people survived. New trades grew around their uncanny gifts.

Storian's song celebrated heroes of that difficult time. Ariel couldn't recall most of the words, but she did remember one verse:

When large had crumbled down to small
,

the Farwalker rose to span them all
.

If knowledge is to rise again
,

hope others can be found by then
.

Unfortunately, Ariel had little idea what it meant, beyond the obvious clues in the Farwalker name. She sifted memories but ended no wiser, only sorry she hadn't paid more attention to Storian's lessons. The verse seemed to hint of another whole trade, a kind of teacher, perhaps. But teaching was the Storians' job. Besides, how much teaching could somebody do if they were walking around all the time?

The offhand remark may have been unimportant, but Scarl's reaction implied otherwise. And if the Finders had confused her with somebody else, or thought she held some Farwalker secret that she certainly didn't, more trouble might be coming when they got her to Libros and the mistake came to light. The rescue party from Canberra Docks had better free her before then.

Yet as one hour trod into the next, she couldn't think about her rescue too much. If she had, she could not have ignored her mounting fear that she'd imagined the apple core in the rocks.

Late that afternoon, Ariel spied chimney smoke. It drifted
past the treetops, rising on a breeze that also bore the jingle of distant cattle or goat bells. The hints of other people sped Ariel's heart.

“Is there a village below? Is that where we're going?”

“Not you, princess,” Elbert said. “It's no more than an old roadhouse, left from the days when some few still traveled by road. Unlike us.” He turned to Scarl, scratching one ear. “I'm thinking to drop by for a jar of beer. Maybe two.”

“We look far too odd as traveling mates.” Scarl tilted his head toward Ariel. “Let's just keep on.”

“No, the beer is more persuasive than you are, my friend. You stay here with the horse and the two-legged luggage. I'll return soon enough. I'll bring you a swallow if I can talk them out of a jarful.” Shouldering his pack, Elbert started downhill toward the smoke, picking through the boulders that littered the slope.

Scarl watched him go. Then he turned, checked the sun's low position, and considered Ariel at length, rasping one finger along the stubble on his jaw. “Hmm,” he said. “Maybe I'll just put you to work.”

He removed his coat and his shirt. Ariel's heart shot into her throat. With ribs lining his bare chest, he looked to be more sinew than muscle, but he'd picked her up bodily more than once. She knew exactly how little resistance she could offer if he'd decided that her clothes would be coming off next.

She had just opened her mouth to protest or plead when he tossed his shirt at her. It smelled of wood smoke and sweat.

“You can sew, can't you?”

She nodded, her arms limp with relief. Before long, she'd been tasked with stitching up several rips in his shirt. The Finder provided a needle from a small bundle of goods in his coat. He
didn't have thread, so Ariel settled for a strand of horsetail. Orion didn't even flick his ears at her yank. Loosing one of her wrists, Scarl tied her snugly astride the horse, facing backward so she could lean over and pluck hairs as needed. Then he hobbled the horse.

Freed from her and the leash, Scarl found a small pool of rainwater trapped among the hillside's many rocks. He bathed there discreetly, using one sock as a washrag. Ariel fought envy as she sewed. Her own skin felt gritty and sticky from too many days with no bath.

She was so filthy, in fact, she was attracting flies. That's what she thought when a horsefly flew into her shoulder, then another bounced off her leg. A third missile fell into the shirt fabric spread on her lap. Staring, Ariel saw that it was not a fly but a pebble. Orion stretched his neck to one side, fluttering his nostrils at some unfamiliar scent.

Of course! Her confusion cleared. She'd almost missed the start of her long-awaited rescue. She glanced toward Scarl, who was busy dressing again. As casually as she could, she looked toward the apparent source of the rain of pebbles.

A flash of motion caught her eye. She sucked in a sharp breath. Zeke crouched beneath the curve of a boulder that hid him from the Finder.

Immediately Ariel stared at her sewing, resisting the urge to check Scarl's attention. If he were watching, that alone might give Zeke away.

Her mind raced. Why had her rescuers brought Zeke? Maybe he and the trees had helped them find her. Being smaller, too, he could sneak better than grown men. That had to be it.

She risked a peek at Scarl. He was donning his boots and
didn't seem to suspect. Amazed that he could not hear her heart pounding, Ariel pretended to rethread her needle, keeping her friend visible from the corner of her eye.

Zeke pointed to Scarl and made a series of gestures that included tipping his cheek onto his hands like a pillow. She understood perfectly: when the men slept tonight, she must stay awake. She nodded subtly to her lap. At her next stolen glance, Zeke was gone. And not a moment too soon. Scarl approached.

Ariel sewed, her stomach churning and her mind far from the needle. Scarl checked her progress, apparently not noticing how her fingers shook.

When she returned his shirt, she asked if she might bathe, too, afraid she would never sit still without a distraction. Agreeing, Scarl accompanied her to the puddle and turned a shoulder to her. Stirred up now, the water looked murky. Ariel heaved a rueful sigh and began splashing.

She'd long ago ripped her nightgown into a blouse, tying the remnant around her neck for more warmth. Now she used the makeshift scarf as a washrag, drawing it, sopping, under her shirt. The cold water stung less than the notion that she was wiping Scarl's grime onto her skin.

By the time she was done, though, she'd grown used to what might happen tonight. No longer terrified that she'd give something away, she thanked Scarl for letting her wash.