The Master's Chair (The Chronicles of Terah) (61 page)

“Not well. They’re going to fight you. It won’t be quiet and it won’t be easy. Are you sure you can handle a fighting horse?”

“No, I’m not sure of anything except that we’re going to have to fight if we stay here. We could defeat them easily enough, but I’d rather not advertise the fact that one of us is a sorcerer.”

“Wait a minute. There’s a way we might be able to do it,” Karl said. “It’ll take a little longer, but I think it’ll be safer all the way around. I have a couple of platforms that Blalick and I built. One is anchored under the old minstrel wagon, and the other one’s under the new wagon. I was thinking along the lines of using them to roll the wagons across washed out areas or deep mud, but I think we might be able to use them with the horses. They’re about six feet long and three feet wide. I could stand on the platform with the horse and hold his head while you ‘float us’ across. They’re used to crossing rivers on ferries, and a lot of the time they end up standing right at the edge. As long as they’re standing on something solid, they should be able to handle it.”

“It won’t bother them to see the water passing by?” Chris asked.

“We’ll have a scarf ready to use as a blinder in case one of them starts getting jittery. Let’s try it with mine first. The water won’t bother him and I know he’s a strong swimmer, so if anything goes wrong, he should be able to make it out of the river okay.”

Darrell and Steve helped Karl unfasten the platform that he had stored under the bottom of the old minstrel wagon. Once they had that one free, Darrell, Steve, and Chris said that they’d get the other one so that Karl could get his horse and see if his idea was going to work.

While Karl was bringing his horse down to the river bank, Kevin floated the heavy platform over to the edge of the bank and held it steady so that Karl could lead his horse straight onto it. Once Karl and his horse were standing on the platform, Kevin eased it out over the water. He held it about a foot above the water and slowly moved it across the river. When it reached the other side, he held it snug against the opposite bank so that Karl could walk his horse off the platform and onto solid ground.

Then Kevin quickly floated the platform back to his side of the river where Joan was waiting with the mare that she usually rode. After she and her horse were standing on the platform, she covered her horse’s eyes with a dishtowel. As the platform began to move, Joan whispered, “When we reach the other side, wait for Karl. I’ll stay with the horses over there. He can come back and help you.”

By the time Kevin had floated Joan across the river, Darrell and Chris had the other platform ready, and Steve had another horse ready to cross. Within thirty minutes, all of the horses were on the north side of the river with Joan.

While the others were busy with the horses, Theresa cleaned out the coffee pot, rinsed out the mugs, gathered up the bedrolls and sleeping tarps, and stored everything in the wagons. Then Kevin told her to climb up on her wagon seat and get ready to cross the river.

 “Kevin, have you given any thought as to where you’re going to land the wagons?” Karl asked. “The woods are pretty thick over there. We had trouble getting the horses through.”

Kevin nodded and said, “The wagons are going over the tops of the trees and landing on the road. I thought you might want to go over first so that you could help Joan handle the horses when the wagons start floating in.”

“Good idea,” Karl agreed and closed his eyes. Kevin lifted him over the woods and set him down about three feet from Joan. She didn’t see him until he was almost close enough to touch.

Joan laughed quietly. “I think this is going to work. It’s dark enough out here that no one can see what we’re doing.”

“If we can keep the horses quiet,” Karl whispered.

A couple of minutes later, a black shadow began to descend towards the road. The wagon settled so gently and quietly that the horses barely noticed. A few minutes later, the old minstrel wagon drifted down with Steve on the seat, followed shortly by Darrell and the new wagon.

While they were busy hitching the horses to the wagons and getting ready to move out, the two wooden platforms floated down with Chris standing on top of them. Kevin still hadn’t joined them by the time they had the platforms secured under the wagons, and Chris was beginning to get concerned.

“I wonder what’s keeping him,” Chris mumbled. “I thought he was coming right behind me,”

“He’ll be all right, Chris,” Joan said. “He can take care of himself. He’s a sorcerer now.”

“I know. That’s part of the problem. I know he’s got something up his sleeve, and I don’t like it when I don’t know what’s going on.”

After a couple of minutes, Kevin drifted down beside Chris. “I have an idea,” he said quietly. “Get the others over here while I do a quick check on the bounty hunters.”

When Chris had everyone together, Kevin said, “The bounty hunters are still at their camps. I don’t think they noticed anything, but when they storm our camp tomorrow morning, it isn’t going to take them long to figure out that we must have crossed the river, and then they’ll be right back on our trail. I’ve been trying to come up with some way to convince them that we’re dead so they’ll give up and go home.”

“Sounds good, but how are you going to do that?” Darrell asked.

“How about having a tornado hit right about daybreak and sweep through our camp? You know, one of those really ferocious ones that clears everything out of its path. If I brought it down the road, scattering them as it approaches, and then swept it through the middle of our camp before letting it break off, it would look like it got us, the wagons, the horses, everything, but to make it look real, I’ll need to scatter a little debris around the campsite. What have we got that we don’t need? Any pots or dishes? Does anyone have a shirt or maybe a pair of boots that they don’t want anymore?”

“Sort of like what the submarines used to send up to make the destroyers think they’d been sunk,” Darrell said with a nod. “I like it. I bet we can find a few odds and ends that we could live without, especially if it gets those guys off our trail. Let’s see what we can come up with.”

Within a few minutes, Kevin had a fairly large assortment of everyday items to use as debris. He was about to head back to the south side of the river when Chris stopped him and said, “Look, I know you’re thinking of doing this on your own, but I know how you are when you’re working with storms. If the bounty hunters attack while you’re stirring things up, you’ll never even know it. I’m going to go with you to keep an eye on your back while you’re off in the clouds.”

“It’s too risky,” Kevin whispered. “I’ve never tried maneuvering one this close before. I could get us both killed,”

“I know that, but your chances of pulling this off are better if I’m there, and you know it. You need my eyes and ears,” Chris whispered back.

“All right, but let’s get everyone else out of the way,” Kevin sighed. Then he spoke up loud enough for the others to hear him. “Chris is going to have to stay here and help me, but I want the rest of you out of harm’s way so that I don’t have to try to cover you, too. Karl, how far do you think you can travel by daybreak? Can you get ten miles?”

“I don’t know. It’s pretty dark out here, but the road seems to be fairly decent. If we don’t drop a wheel in a hole we should be able to get about eight anyway,” Karl answered. “At any rate, we’ll do the best we can, and we’ll stay on this road, wherever it’s heading.”

“As long as it’s going away from those bounty hunters, it’s heading in the right direction,” Steve mumbled as he climbed up to the seat of the old minstrel wagon and picked up the reins.

Kevin and Chris watched as the wagons started moving down the road, led by Karl and shadowed by Darrell. As Darrell rode by, he saluted Kevin and whispered, “We’ll be expecting you shortly after sunrise. If you don’t show, we’ll be back for you.”

“No,” Kevin whispered back. “If we don’t join you, it’s because we’re dead. Keep going. Get to Milhaven. Let them know what happened.”

Darrell shook his head and whispered back over his shoulder as he rode on down the road, “If you don’t show, we’ll be back.”

After the wagons faded into the night, Kevin lifted himself, Chris, and the debris, and floated them back to the south side of the river to their campsite. Chris scattered the various bits that would serve as evidence of their destruction around the campsite. He wasn’t sure why he was doing that, since Kevin’s tornado would probably scatter them even farther, but it was something to do while he waited for dawn.

Kevin kept his seeing eye trained on the bounty hunters, watching for any signs of an early morning attack. About the time that the sky began to lighten in the east, the bounty hunters began to move around and pack up. Kevin scanned the overcast sky for a heavy cloud that would be easy to stir up, and found one not too far away to the west. He and Chris ducked behind a small grove of trees and he began to stir up the wind and lightening. Before long, he had a nice thunderhead growing.

The approaching storm spurred the bounty hunters into action, so Kevin took one last quick look around, warned Chris that the bounty hunters were on the move, and gave himself over to creating the tornado.

Chris unsheathed his sword and circled around so that he was within an arm’s reach of Kevin but between him and the old campsite. He stared at the woods, watching for anything that moved as he listened to the distinctive roar of the approaching storm. He didn’t have to look up at the sky to know that the funnel was forming; he could hear all about it from the screams of the bounty hunters as they tried to mount their frightened horses and ride out of the path of the tornado. After a few minutes, the only sound Chris could hear was the roar of the storm.

Chris knew that Kevin was in the middle of it mentally, and he couldn’t help but wonder just how close they were to being in the middle of it physically. As he listened, the roar seemed to level off for a couple of minutes and a dark wind, thick with dirt and forest debris, swept through their old campsite, but it was only a wind, not a tornado.

After the noise from the tornado died out and the wind passed, Kevin grinned and said, “You should have seen them run. They’ll be miles from here before they even slow down.”

“What happened? Where’s the tornado,” Chris asked with a frown. “I thought you were going to hit the camp site so that it would look destroyed.”

“Take a look. See what you think.”

Chris stepped out from behind the bushes where they had been standing and looked around. Trees along a path about a hundred yards long had been uprooted and tossed around like kindling. Most of the debris Chris had scattered was pinned under fallen trees and half covered by dirt and leaves.

Kevin asked, “Do you think it looks like a tornado hit it?”

“What do you mean, ‘looks like’?”

“Well, I sort of danced the funnel around and then sent it back up right before it got here. I didn’t want to take the chance of a tree coming down on top of us while I was off in the clouds. After I had the funnel back up in the cloud, I stirred up a good dirty wind down here so no one could see me uproot the trees and set the scene.”

“You did all of this?”

“Yeah, do you think it looks all right?”

Chris looked around again and nodded. “It really does look like the tornado went through here.” Then he looked at Kevin and asked, “Are you about ready to get out of here? I’m not as sure as you are that those guys are miles away. Now that the storm is gone, they’ll start heading back.”

“Okay, but what are we going to use as a diversion so that I can lift us up over those trees without being seen?” After a moment, Kevin said, “I know what I’ll do,” and snow flakes began to fall.

“You’re making history with this weather you know. A tornado in January? Followed by a snowstorm?”

“Not just a snow storm, Chris. There’s a lot of moisture up there, and the temperature’s cold enough. Let me see if I can’t stir up a little blizzard out of this,” Kevin said as he focused on the clouds again. A few minutes later, the snow was coming down so heavy and fast that it created a whiteout. Kevin lifted himself and Chris and quickly floated them across the river, over the trees on the other side, and down the road after the wagons. The snowstorm followed them until Kevin had the wagons in sight. Then he let the wind slack off and the snow settled down to a gentle flurry.

As they joined the others, Karl nodded and said, “There won’t be any sign that we were on the road on the north side of the river now that it’s covered in snow. Nice touch.”

After Steve handed the old minstrel wagon back over to Kevin and he and Chris mounted their horses, Karl said, “Okay, let’s see how much distance we can put between ourselves and those bounty hunters by nightfall,” and turned his horse to head on down the road.

~ ~ ~ ~

Over the next few hours, while the Tellurians headed east on the north side of Pooley River, the bounty hunters, led by the bandit from Billows, returned to search along the tornado’s path. After a grueling morning of digging through the snow that had been dumped on the area behind the tornado, they gathered in the middle of what had been the Tellurians’ campsite with the debris that they had found. Even though none of them had found a body, they all agreed that there was no way any of the people in that campsite could have survived.

As he rode back to town with the rest of the posse, the bandit from Billows cursed the deaths of the minstrels and the loss of the bounty money. Fate was definitely against him where those minstrels were concerned. Both times that he’d tangled with them, he’d lost. His only consolation was that fate had dealt them a far worse hand.