Authors: Jane Fletcher
“Yes, five years ago.”
“Right. That explains it.”
“What?”
“That you don’t look much like her. I mean, you’ve both got the scout-type build, like you could do with an extra meal or two. Anyone can see you don’t have the muscles to be a warrior.”
Deryn let the comment pass, even though she felt she was plenty strong enough.
Shea continued. “You’re a lot paler than Brise—your skin, straw-colored hair, and your eyes. Are they blue or green?”
“I’ve been told it depends on the light.”
“Right.” Shea smiled, and her voice dropped. “You know, I’d noticed them before now. They’re really nice.”
Deryn’s heart jumped a beat while her palms again grew sticky. “Um…thanks…I—”
“Deryn. You finished practicing your archery?” A shout from Brise rang across the camp.
“Ah, yeah.” Deryn spun away from the tree, holding out her bow in a pointless gesture. Brise would be quite well aware that she had been chatting for the last five minutes, rather than doing what she was supposed to.
“We ought to run a sweep. Come on.”
Deryn glanced at Shea. “Maybe we’ll talk some more when I get back.”
“Sure. I’m not going anywhere.” Again Shea held the eye contact for a moment longer than normal.
Deryn turned and trotted away, her heart thumping against her ribs.
“We’ll start out east and swing by the lake.” Brise set off without waiting for a reply, vanishing into the trees.
Deryn took two steps but then stopped for a last look around the clearing. The mining camp in the valley was as close to idyllic as could be expected after a dozen miners had spent six months there, digging for gold. A dense forest of pine trees blanketed the flanks of the mountains on either side. A gurgling river ran along the bottom, glinting in the warm sunlight. Birdsong rippled down from the treetops, overlying the shushing of a breeze through the branches.
Shea had wandered over to join the remaining four Iron Wolves and had lain down, her tall frame stretched on the grass, with her hands behind her head as a pillow. The pose emphasized the width of Shea’s shoulders and the firm muscles of her stomach and thighs. Deryn could not stop herself staring, taking in every detail, as she had been doing since Shea arrived at the camp.
Initially, the miners had needed guards only for wild animals, but now their store of gold had grown and human predators also presented a risk. The most dangerous time would be when they broke camp, in another month or so, and carted their entire season’s cache to Oakan. Hence, the miners had employed Shea and the two other Iron Wolves who had arrived with the last supply wagon.
Immediately, the young female warrior had caught Deryn’s attention. Never before had she seen anyone ride in the way Shea could. When added to her athletic body, her relaxed self-assurance, and the scant few years separating them, Shea presented an irresistible lure.
Roughly a fifth of Iron Wolves were women, most of them scouts or trackers, like Brise. Warriors such as Shea were rare. The raw muscle power required for fighting put women at a disadvantage. Even with her height, Shea could not hope to match a man in strength, but she more than made up for it with her skill on horseback. Deryn felt her skin warm with the memory of Shea shooting at the tree.
“Hey, Deryn. Where are you?”
“Coming.” Deryn hurried to catch up with her foster mother and mentor.
No breeze permeated the dense matting of branches as she and Brise climbed the hillside. The warm air surrounded Deryn like a cocoon. Sounds were muted, colors dimmed. Brise drifted through the gloom, silent as a ghost. Deryn tried her best to copy the stealthy footsteps, while at the same time taking in as many details as she could. Brise would be sure to quiz her later about anything significant they had passed.
After a mile of climbing, they reached a rocky outcrop, where a recent landslip had stripped away the tree cover below. The spot was a favorite lookout point, providing a view down the valley.
Brise settled on a convenient boulder, her eyes fixed on the distance. “You and Shea were having a good chat.”
“Ah…yeah.” This was not the topic Deryn had expected, and she needed a moment to adjust her thoughts.
“You shouldn’t take what she says too seriously.”
“What do you mean?”
“She doesn’t know quite as much as she thinks she does.”
Deryn was confused. What did Brise think they had been talking about? “She was telling me about the Misery Trail. She said we ought to do it next year.”
“That proves my point. The Trail is no place for children.”
“I’m sixteen.”
“Just barely.”
Deryn tried not to pout. “Shea’s only a bit older than me, and she’s done it.”
“I’d put her three or four years older. And she got hurt.”
“It was an accident.”
“Yup. Accidents are what kill you, and they mostly happen to people who are young and inexperienced.”
“It wasn’t her fault.”
“She told you that?”
Deryn nodded.
“How many things that have gone wrong in her life were her fault?” Brise looked skeptical. “Believe me. I know the sort. Nothing is ever her fault or happens because she isn’t good enough.”
“Shea helped kill a windigo that attacked her party. If I’m gonna become a scout, I’ll need to know how to deal with things like that.”
Brise laughed. “Most windigos are hulking great things that leave footprints so deep you could follow them blindfolded, without getting off your horse. Believe me, after tracking something the size of a rabbit, windigos will be a piece of piss.”
“There has to be something I—”
Brise did not move, except maybe the lines around her eyes hardened, but Deryn knew her well enough to tell that the experienced scout had spotted something.
Damn
. Deryn had gotten too caught up in what they were saying and had let her attention slip. The lapse was not the sort of thing Brise would overlook, nor would it help win the argument over the Misery Trail. She turned and scanned the valley below.
Two miles distant, a flock of sparrows had risen and were swirling around. The small birds skimmed low over the treetops, settling for a second, only to rise again. Whatever was upsetting them lay below rather than above.
“Do you think it might be bears or wolves?” Brise asked.
“Of course not. The sparrows would ignore them.”
“Something in the trees? A snake?”
This was a trickier question. Deryn hesitated. “No. The locus is moving. It’s gone about fifty feet while we’ve been watching. That’s walking pace. It has to be people, and they’re making enough noise to upset the sparrows. Nobody from the camp is gonna be over there, so it’s someone new in the area, but I don’t know who.”
Brise gave a soft laugh and patted Deryn’s shoulder. “No. That would be a bit of a hard question to answer from here—even for me.”
The miners’ campsite was in the wilderness, with no proper road leading to it, but over the course of the year the supply wagon had left a trail that would be easy to follow, except this was not the route the strangers were taking.
Deryn frowned. “They’re heading south of the mine. If they keep on that path, they’ll bypass it altogether.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“So have they got no interest in the mine?”
“That’s another question that’s a bit hard to answer from up here, but I suspect…”
“What?”
Brise shook her head. “There’s no point guessing. Let’s go find out.”
She set off, moving more directly and faster than on her ascent of the hillside, but making no more noise.
Deryn kept close behind, stepping in Brise’s footsteps. All her senses were on such a keen edge it felt as if they were outside her skin, yet it was hard to hear anything over her heartbeat booming in her ears. For the second time in an hour Deryn’s stomach tightened in a knot, but in a very different way and for a very different reason. She was good in the wilderness. She knew it. Otherwise Brise would not have taken her as foster daughter and apprentice. Deryn just hoped, when it came to a crisis point, she would be good enough.
Brise motioned for them to stop in the cover of a dense clump of undergrowth. The spot overlooked a shallow gully, with a stream cascading over a rocky bed. Deryn had barely slipped into place beside her foster mother when she caught the sound of horses, getting closer. She quickly checked to ensure that the bush was concealing all of her and then peered through a gap in the leaves.
In single file, nine horsemen rode by, following the line of the stream. The riders were dirty and disheveled. Clearly they had been on the road for a while. Their clothes and gear were old and of poor quality, except for their weapons, which were in prominent display. There was no mistaking where the group had spent whatever money they had scraped together. The arsenal was quite excessive for any threat from wild animals, and the leader was not wearing the badge of the marshal’s men, which left only one conclusion.
Deryn waited until the sound of horses had faded before speaking. “Outlaws.”
“I fear so.”
“Do you think they’re here to steal the miners’ gold?”
“It’s hard to see what else they’d be after.”
“How’d they know where the mine is?”
“Maybe we’ll get the chance to ask them.”
Deryn chewed her lip. “There’s only nine of them. We outnumber them, if you add in the miners.”
“The miners have paid us to defend them. They shouldn’t have to defend themselves.”
“They will, though, won’t they, rather than lose their gold?”
“That’s not the point.” Brise pursed her lips. “And anyway, this gang might be on their way to hook up with others.” She stared thoughtfully at the point where the riders had vanished into the forest. “Go back to the camp. Tell Faren what we’ve seen and get the camp organized for defense. I’m going to track the gang and see if I can find out anything more.”
Deryn ducked her head to hide her disappointment and irritation.
She’s treating me like a kid again, sending me out of danger’s way.
The thought rankled, but any temptation to plead her case was immediately countered by knowledge that Brise was right. The other Iron Wolves needed to be made aware of what was happening, and acting like a sulking toddler would not be a good way to impress Brise with her maturity.
Deryn nodded sharply. “Right. I’ll see you back at camp.”
*
Deryn peered over the top of the hastily erected barricade. The logs had been cut ready for use as mine supports, and it had been the work of minutes to turn them into a very solid wall around the entrance to the main shaft. To her left, a couple of miners were whispering to each other as they also stood watch. Deryn ignored them, keeping her attention fixed on the deserted scene before her.
Virtually nothing of the camp remained in view. They had dismantled everything they could and carried it into the mine. One of the miners was currently leading the horses far away up the mountain, in the hope that the outlaws would not think them worth pursuing. Only the supply wagon was left. Its loss would be a nuisance for the miners, but it would not present much in the way of spoils, should the outlaws settle for looting what they could under cover of night and then leaving.
The stretch of grass looked peaceful in the sunlight. At the far edge of the clearing, the river looped around the base of a rock face before disappearing into the woods. The only movements were branches, swaying in the breeze, and the water, cascading over rocks. On either side, the precipitous valley walls were impassable on horseback, but it was unsafe to assume that any attack would come along the rough track beside the river. The outlaws could easily scramble down the hillside. The trees would conceal their approach, although the broken slopes would not offer a promising start for a coordinated attempt at storming the barricade.
Abruptly, the background chatter of birdsong faltered and was replaced by scattered chirps of alarm. Someone was approaching. Deryn scoured the valley for the first sign as to who. A flash of white showed between the branches at a height of about eight feet, which was right for a mounted rider. However, the motion was wrong, swaying from side to side, and Deryn was not surprised that the figure who eventually stepped clear of the trees was on foot. The white cloth was a grubby shirt, tied to the end of a stick.
The man holding it was tall and powerfully built. Corded muscle bunched in his arm as he waved the makeshift flag above his head. His heavy jaw was covered in black stubble. A broken nose and a studded leather jerkin completed the look of a fighter, but was he a warrior or a street brawler? At his side was a second figure, smaller and paler in complexion, a woman with the sharp eyes and light tread of a scout.
“Faren. Someone’s here. They want to parley,” Deryn called.
The two miners broke off their muttered conversation. Presumably, they had been too busy talking to keep watch and had not spotted the outlaws’ arrival.
Faren emerged from the darkness of the mine, his arms folded across his broad chest. He was fifty or so, easily the oldest of the Iron Wolves. His age explained why he no longer rode the Misery Trail, but he was still tough and his experience made him the unquestioned leader of the mercenary guards. Deryn trusted him totally. Even so, she would have been happier if Brise were there. Deryn caught her lip in her teeth. Why had Brise not yet returned? Surely nothing could have gone wrong.