Back | Next
Contents

ELEVEN

After a little I let my horse slow to a brisk trot again, but we were still putting a lot of miles behind us. Then, before too many minutes, I became aware of a distant sound behind me. My scalp prickled: it was hounds! It could have been just a party of knights out hunting game, but somehow I was pretty sure that what they were tracking was me.

I'd come several miles since I'd fought the pirates, so Roland and his people must have found the bodies by then. Apparently it hadn't made that much difference to them, hadn't scared them off. What it probably had done was make them more watchful and dangerous than they would have been otherwise.

I kicked my horse into a canter once more. It looked like I was going to find out how far you could push a horse before he quit or went down. And how far I could push myself; I was really saddle sore by then. I didn't really worry about how much I could take, though. I'd take as much as I needed to, to get me wherever I was going.

That's when it occurred to me that I had no idea where I was going!

I knew that somewhere, not too far ahead, the hills ended—a couple of miles or maybe four or five. Then they'd give way to a broad flat valley. I remembered that from flying over it on my stormy first day in Normandy. The flat district had a lot of cleared farmland, especially near the river, and villages and castles. There were even two or three fortified towns along the river there. What would the locals make of someone dressed like I was, running a horse as hard as he could? They wouldn't have to be too smart to realize I was being chased by someone.

And who would be chasing me but knights? As far as I could tell, they were the authorities in this country. And with clothes like mine, I was neither knight nor monk nor priest. Which seemed to mean I had no standing, nor rights to amount to much. Would people just try to stop me, without cause, and hold me for whoever was chasing me?

I was running away from trouble, but I might also be running into it! Still, I told myself, I was better off running toward possible trouble ahead than waiting for the certain trouble that was chasing me. I dug my heels into my horse's flanks to get a little more speed from him.

The baying of the hounds got fainter, and after two or three minutes I couldn't hear them at all. I was leaving them behind again. Then it occurred to me that if I were Roland, I wouldn't be riding behind the hounds—not on the road like this. I'd leave two or three men with them and gallop on ahead. The hounds might be half a mile or more behind me, but how near were the nearest riders? I decided to look backward every few seconds. If someone came in sight chasing me, I'd take a shot at his horse with the blaster. That would slow him down, even if I missed!

In a pinch I could always lie in wait, of course, shoot the first riders or dogs, and then take off again. But I didn't want to kill Roland or any of his men. I still wanted to make a deal with them. Somehow, I had to outwit them and stay free long enough for dad to pick me up.

About then I rounded a curve and there was a knight about two hundred feet ahead of me, riding my way. As soon as we saw each other, he lowered his lance and shouted for me to halt. When I kept coming, full tilt, he kicked his horse into a gallop and charged. I snatched my stunner off my belt and pointed it, then pressed the firing stud at about seventy feet, aiming at the animal. He went down skidding, sliding along on sheer momentum, throwing the knight over his head.

It must have really jarred and shaken the guy to go down like that, as well as totally surprising him. So you can imagine how surprised I was when he landed rolling and came up on his feet, pulling at his sword. But by that time I had passed him, and all he could do was yell after me as I looked back. The whole thing took about three or four seconds.

When I rounded the next bend in the road, about a half mile farther on, I could see another road ahead that came down out of the hills to the river, with a wharf at its foot. A small barge-like ferryboat was just pulling away with several mounted churchmen on it, one of them pretty fancily dressed. Two oarsmen stood one on each side, rowing from a standing position with one long oar apiece. A third stood in the stern, sweeping another long oar from side to side. They were headed for the wharf across the river, where the road began again.

It seemed like the right time to take a chance. I slowed to a trot. When I got to the wharf, the ferry was most of the way across. I rode my horse right off the wharf, as if I'd gotten onto the ferry. It was only a couple of feet drop into the water, which seemed to be about five feet deep there. I felt his hooves hit the bottom, but it was too deep for him to wade. He bobbed back up and started to swim, and I headed him diagonally downstream to make it look to the boatmen as if I were crossing. Meanwhile, I took advantage of the current. Then, when I was around the bend in the river, just ahead, I'd angle back toward the east side again instead of crossing.

The knights were supposed to think that I'd taken the ferry to the west side. So they'd swim their horses across, I hoped, and the hounds would start hunting around over there for my trail, which they wouldn't find because I hadn't crossed. The knights would probably question the ferrymen, and maybe they'd catch on then or maybe they wouldn't. At any rate, there'd be confusion, and hopefully they wouldn't think to look for me back on the east side.

Hopefully. I had to take chances or they'd catch me almost for sure. Meanwhile, I could hear the hounds again. If some of the knights were riding ahead of them, they might be getting close to the wharf. I prodded my horse to get him to swim faster, and wished I knew his name. Horses seemed a lot like gorms in personality; if I knew his name, I could use it to urge him on faster.

At last the bend cut me off from view of the ferry and wharf, and I steered him toward the east shore. Darry—I decided I'd give him a name, and Darry was the name of the gorm we'd had for a couple of years when I was a kid—Darry, still seeming as strong as ever, took me back across and up the bank, dripping. I rode along through the woods for a little while before returning to the road. I wanted to quit dripping, so I wouldn't leave a track of wet drips where anyone would notice them. Just in case.

While I was jogging along through the trees, the baying got louder upstream, then changed. After a minute or so it stopped. I guessed that maybe the knights and dogs were swimming the river to the west bank. Three or four minutes after that I could hear them again, but this time it sounded really different, sort of a confused barking. I decided it was time to take to the road again.

I held Darry to a brisk trot as we went. Where to now, I asked myself, and what next? I could hardly keep running forever. I'd only been running for—it was probably about two hours—but besides being chased by a squad of knights, I'd been attacked by river pirates or highwaymen or whatever they'd been, and by a knight I didn't even know, just riding along the road! This country was dangerous enough for the people who lived here; it was no place for someone like me.

How long would it take before dad came looking for me? He thought I was safe back in Roland's castle, or maybe unsafe back in Roland's castle, and he wouldn't know otherwise until tomorrow morning before dawn, when he met or failed to meet with Arno. Then he'd either have to risk hunting for me by daylight or wait until the night after next. In either case, I was going to get awfully hungry, if I were still alive.

And maybe Arno would put him off, tell him I was back at the castle, sound asleep. But I didn't believe dad would fall for that. He'd know that something was peculiar; Bubba would for sure, if he were there. Still, what could dad do? He still might not know I was out wandering around the country.

And suppose—suppose Roland figured out something to trick him and take over the cutter himself! But he'd never get away with that, no chance, unless Arno helped him.

If Arno were really smart, he'd meet with dad, tell him what actually had happened, and dump Roland. Then they could come and find me, and we'd go recruit some new baron, or some more independent knights and sergeants.

But that wasn't what I wanted. Time was limited, and the quickest thing was to pull Roland into the mission. He was already convinced that we were for real and were the key to something he wanted. And I couldn't see any reason to believe that some other baron would be more reliable.

I was riding along worrying like that when Darry gave a little snort, and sort of shied, nervously. Instantly I was alert, looking all around. He speeded his pace a little. A moment later I saw Bubba come loping out of the forest behind us. He'd picked up the horse's fear, though, and didn't try to catch us. He just closed up to about fifty feet and kept his distance.

"Am I still being followed?" I called to him mentally.

It was impossible for him to go through the effort of talking while he was running, so he didn't answer verbally. But he kept his pace even and his eyes on mine, calmly. I was sure he'd do something more than that if there were immediate danger. So I reined Darry off the road and into the forest, where I stopped and tied the reins to a young tree. Then I trotted back myself to talk with Bubba, far enough from Darry that he wouldn't go frantic on me.

"What happened?" Bubba wanted to know.

I told him. Not in words—that was slower than I needed to be with him—but by just sort of running back through my consciousness the major events since I'd left the cutter that morning before dawn. I'd talked to Bubba that way before; when you're used to it, it goes pretty fast. This time it took about two minutes. Then I ran my chief worries by him.

"But if Roland and his knights have quit hunting for me," I finished, "then all I need to do is hang around until dark, while you go and tell dad to come get me."

I'd hardly thought it when he heard the hounds again. I didn't; they were still too far off. But Bubba did. "It sounds like they going to stay after you," he said. "You keep going, be careful. We find you sometime tonight. We fly along river. You stay near it, within mile if you can."

Then he turned and loped away up the slope. I hoped the hound pack didn't leave my trail to follow his. He was bigger and stronger, but even so, they'd kill him if they caught him.

They wouldn't, though, I decided. They'd surely been trained not to leave one trail for another. I went over to Darry and untied him, swung up into the saddle, and hurried back to the road. Somehow I felt confident now. With dad informed, the situation would be under control before midnight. All I needed to do was keep running and not do anything stupid.

I urged Darry to a canter again as I rode away, feeling actually cheerful in spite of a sound that could only be the hounds.

 

Back | Next
Framed