Unicorn Tracks (18 page)

The bang that resulted was so loud I could hear it from the trees. Birds scattered around us. Smoke flew out of the ends of the tubes. Molten metal clung to the ground like silver frost around the cart. Arusei’s secret weapons from Echalend had arrived.

“Does General Zuberi have those?” Kara asked. Her voice trembled.

“I’ve never seen anything like them,” I whispered.

“Me either. I didn’t even know we had them in Echalend.”

The General’s forces would have better rifles than my father’s warriors. A few might carry gas that stung the eyes and poisoned the lungs. But they had nothing like that death cart. When my father and the General arrived, their forces would be entombed in metal by these portable volcanoes. General Zuberi’s musings rang in my ears. He’d wondered why Arusei needed the unicorns so badly. Now we knew, but we’d have no chance to warn them.

Below us, Arusei’s men stacked cart after cart with the tubes. Others brought metal plates and starting fitting them to the unicorns’ bodies. Armor. They wanted to make it hard for the General’s men to shoot the unicorns. When the men finished loading the carts, I noticed that they had six carts with tubes but no unicorns to pull them. It was a small comfort, knowing that by stealing the moonstone, we’d robbed them of their ability to field six of the death carts. I slipped my hand inside my shirt, assuring myself that it remained with me. The stone’s glassy surface was warm with the heat radiating from my skin.

“We have to do something.”

“What we can do? We won’t have time to ride all the way back to the city. And we might miss them depending on the route they take. There is nothing we can do. We can’t fight Arusei alone.” I felt completely powerless to stop the carnage that would follow. The General would lose. My cousin would remain the slave of a crazed warlord forever. And all of Nazwimbe would fall.

“Set the unicorns free.”

Her answer was so simple, so confident, that I wanted to believe we could do it. But the camp was armed, the overseers wary, and there was no way we could pass as emissaries again.

Kara gripped my arm. Leaves and needles from the tree clung to strands of her hair and that worrying sparkle of mischievous insanity glittered in her eyes again. “I have an idea.”

USING A
piece of charcoal from our dwindling fire, I outlined Kara’s eyes in smooth black. Then brushing white and gray ash across her lids, I blended the colors together into a smoky haze. Brilliant blue twinkled against the sultry darkness. Kara pinched her cheeks to bring on a wanton flush, as I raked my fingers through her hair to mess it up.

A mix of fear and longing spread through me. I wanted to drag her to my lips by her hair and use my body to stop her from doing this mad thing.

“Go on,” she breathed. Her body trembled. “Mess me up. I need to look disheveled.”

“Kara,” I whispered, biting my lip and looking skyward so I wouldn’t have to look into her eyes. “You don’t have to do this. We can find another way to get into the camp.”

“We’ve been through this already. I can’t think of any other way.”

“You could get hurt; you could end up like me….” My arms wrapped around my body, as I tried to squeeze out the hollowness inside my chest.

“We’ll stick to the plan. Nothing will happen to me. I trust you.”

I swallowed. The weight of the responsibility she was giving me settled so heavily in my stomach, it felt as though my insides had turned to molten lead. At the same time, a tingling lightness spread through my limbs as I struggled to draw breath. How could she ask me to do this? And why didn’t I have another answer?

“We have to go now. If we don’t, I’ll start to chicken out, and I can’t be the one who does that this time.” She laid her hand on my back. “I’ll be fine. I know you’ll stop it soon enough.”

Leaving the horses behind with the fire for protection until Bi Trembla’s kitchen boy came to get them, we made our way across the grasslands separating us from Arusei’s camp. In the foggy haze of the smoky night, all I could see were the outlines of tents, cast in shadows by his men’s fires.

We crouched behind a termite mound, and I whipped out my binoculars. We peered into the darkness like a pair of hyena, waiting to ambush our target. Months of tracking elusive creatures served me well. I knew how to follow the line of shadow and stay camouflaged by the darkness. And I knew how to be patient. We would wait until we found the specific creature we were after.

The target stood against the stable block, back turned away from the camp. His knees were bent, and he pissed against the wall, groaning with relief as steam rose from the ground. I wrinkled my nose in revulsion, motioning Kara forward.

We dropped to our stomachs and began to crawl through the tall grass. I prayed that a leopard or a lioness didn’t lay waiting for us behind a rock or concealed by a dip in the land. My heart felt frozen in my chest, and I struggled to keep my breathing even and quiet. Grass and termites clung to my skin, raising itching bumps across my forearms.

The repugnant prey buttoned his pants and leaned back against the wall, eyes half-closed. We crawled until we were twenty feet from him, hiding behind a pile of discarded meat bones and flour sacks. Then Kara slowly got to her feet.

Watching her go, my stomach churned with nerves. What had seemed like a decent plan before now seemed reckless. What if she couldn’t pull this off? Worse still, what if he really hurt her, and I was too late to stop it? If something happened to her while I watched, I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive myself.

“Hello?” she called softly into the darkness.

The man’s eyes snapped open, and he licked his lips. I could almost see a line of drool coming out of gaping mouth. He edged over to Kara, slithering toward her like a grootslang on the hunt.

“I’m lost,” she whimpered, spewing out the few words of our language she had memorized. Her tongue tripped on the Nazwim, making her seem all the more vulnerable. “When we ran from here, my guide left me.”

His greedy eyes swept over her dirt-covered body and messy hair, taking in the smudges on her cheeks. A hand darted to her breast, the other squeezing the place between her legs so hard that she yelped. He didn’t see the careful outlining of her eyes or notice the way Kara moved with him like a dancer after he released her, circling around so that his back was facing toward me.

“All alone, lovely girl,” he said, leering and pressing his body close to hers. “No one to protect you. No fake chief to swat my hands away. If I help you, what will you give me in return?”

Listening to him made me sick. In that moment I hated both him and myself. I had allowed this, agreed to this insane proposal.

I knew Kara wouldn’t understand what he was saying, but she understood the way he covered her mouth, dirty fingers pawing at the buttons of her shirt. Her pupils dilated in fear, but she didn’t resist him as he pushed her to the ground, determined to see her plan through to the end. I swung my rifle over my shoulder and snuck toward him, a step at a time, hot bile rising in my throat. I wanted to shoot him, to hear the crack of his skull as metal burst through brain and popped out through his repulsive eye socket, but a gunshot would have alerted the whole camp. Everything inside me bubbled with anger. Year-old flashbacks juggled through my mind’s eyes, unwanted. I felt the ground beneath my back, the fingers clawing at my neck and face, the deep burn of his blades…. How had I agreed to this?

I shook my head. If I didn’t focus now, Kara might suffer the same fate.

If he saw me and screamed, the plan would be over. But his lust dulled his senses. He was too fixated on Kara to see my shadow as it fell over them. He didn’t hear the soft crunch of the dry grass under my bare feet. I lunged, swinging my rifle as hard as I could. The butt collided with his temple. He slumped on top of Kara. She exhaled, tears of relief falling down her cheeks. I pushed him off her with my foot.

As he rolled to the side, rage coursed through me. How dare he? Never mind that this had been her plan all along, at that moment, I wished it had failed. I brought my rifle butt down again and again, hitting his stomach, his thighs, and his arms. Even after his body stilled, I couldn’t stop. My arms felt disconnected from my body, operating on their own. I wanted to stop, but I wasn’t in control anymore.

Shaking, Kara climbed to her feet. She wrapped her arms around my back and pressed my arms to my chest. Slowly, she pulled me back, away from her attacker. We embraced silently for a moment, listening to our breath slow. I looked down at the bleeding, unconscious man at my feet and let the anger flood out.

A quick glance around the stable block showed how lucky we’d been. He was the only guard watching the stables while the camp slumbered. Arusei imagined the unicorns safely locked away inside their iron stalls.

The air inside the stable was as stale and pungent as I remembered. The beautiful unicorns stood knee deep in dirty straw, listless with exhaustion. I put my hand through the bars of the first stallion’s grate, trying to coax him to me. The animal didn’t even look up.

Kara walked over to me and sighed. “It’s going to be hard to get them to run. They have no energy left.”

Suddenly, the stallion’s ears perked up. He sniffed the air, staring at Kara with interest. He put his head over the half door of his stable, nuzzling her shoulders and chest. After he had made a thorough examination of her body, his head cocked in confusion, unable to find the source of the smell that had brought him to life.

The foal. Realization hit me as the stallion nibbled Kara’s shoulder. She had carried the baby for days, and the stallion could smell his own kind on her. I wondered if something about the scent told him the baby hadn’t been mutilated—he still had his precious horn and spirit. Kara scratched his forehead, her fingers lingering on the stub of his horn. I peered closer. I could see that the horn was growing. A single, light silver ring twisted around a tiny point.

Kara moved from stall to stall, letting the animals take in her scent. One by one the unicorns perked up. Rows of pricked ears stared back at us, waiting. I began pulling the bolts on their stable doors as fast I could.

At first the creatures just stared at the open doors. Some stood with dirty hay dripping out of their mouths, ears flickering back and forth. I pressed myself against the wall of the stable and held my breath. Then they poured out into the night, in a white river of long manes and sinewy muscle. Their hoofbeats fell softer than a cat’s paw, ghosts.

Kara took my hand and pulled me toward the door. “We have to get out of here. We’ll hide out until we see your father and the General’s men. If we go back to camp, we might miss them. Hopefully they’ll come tomorrow.”

The last unicorn turned to face us at the doorway. The biggest of them all, the top of his back reached higher than my father’s head. He let out a scream; a shrill melody floated on the air, rising higher like the climax of a song. Bending the muscular crest of his neck, the stallion touched his muzzle to his knees. And I could have sworn he was taking a bow.

THORNS PRESSED
into my back and the bush’s sulfurous odor made me sneeze. But if I rolled over, I’d have to move my head off the pillow of Kara’s chest, so I sniffled and tried to ignore the pain. She curled closer to me in sleep, her hands entwined in the fabric of my shirt. A light layer of morning frost covered the ground around us. I shivered, pulling myself even closer to Kara to absorb her warmth. The bush’s terrible scent kept predators away, so we didn’t need a fire for protection, but I missed the heat. I didn’t dare try to make one now, in case Arusei’s men saw the smoke. It was a no-win choice between sleep inside the bush’s prickly curtains or risk being eaten by predators.

Hoofbeats approached, and through the gaps in the leaves, I could make out a sturdy, shiny pair of black hooves. I held my breath and kept my body absolutely still.

“How could you let them get away?” a man’s voice demanded. “You had one job. Only one.”

“I never expected a chief’s daughter to flee like some kind of wild animal in the middle of the night,” another voice hissed back. “The foreigner, maybe. Who knows? Echalenders are a strange people.”

How did they know I was a chief’s daughter? I swallowed, wondering what they had done to Tumelo before putting him to work in order to get information about me. Did they know about Bi Trembla and the camp too?

The horse pulled at his reins, sniffing the grass below with interest. Its pink muzzle nosed the grass a foot away from my feet.

“Still,” the first voice began. “Foreigner or not—stealing the General’s goddaughter’s pony? Poor Ariana was sick with worry. Up all night. And she’s such a sweet child. Serves his brat of a grandson right, though.”

“Too right,” the second man chuckled. “Little wretch needs to learn to share his toys. I can’t believe they jumped over the wall on those things. That takes guts.”

I sucked in a deep breath. These men weren’t from Arusei at all. Even if he had tortured Tumelo until my cousin broke, Tumelo could not have revealed our midnight pony heist. I sat up, scratching my arms on brambles and thorns and crawled out of the bush.