Of Truth And Beasts Part 17

"Fresh food is just as important," he told Ore-Locks. "Help Wynn barter for proper stores."

If this flattery affected Ore-Locks, he did not show it.

"Come on," Wynn said. "We have only tonight. We'll meet back here."

With one last glance at Chane, Ore-Locks followed Wynn and Shade toward town.

Chane waited until they were out of sight and then headed sh.o.r.eward. A caravan station on the outskirts would not be the only place to land cargo in a port. He worked his way along the waterfront's southern end, watching for any sign of a major stable nearer the warehouses. It did not take long.

When he spotted a likely place up an inland side road, he looked all ways for anyone in the streets. Testing the wide stable doors, he found they would not budge. The fact that they were barred from the inside actually brought him some relief. This also meant there had to be another exit-or entrance. The stable master had closed up for the night and would need another way out.

The closest people were more than two blocks away, so he slipped around the building's side, down the cutway, reaching an alcove off the rear alley. The stable's rear door was padlocked from the outside. It took little effort, and a little noise, to dislodge the locking plate from the doorjamb.

Soft knickers greeted him inside, along with the scents of leather, hay, and dung in dusty-smelling air. Pitchforks and hay bundles lined the back wall to the open rafters, but a black gelding and a bay mare stood in the nearest stalls. Both were the youngest and healthiest among six others. He searched until he found harnesses pegged on the front wall and pulled down the newest-looking pair. As to a wagon, he had no such choice.

The only one inside was a large, two-wheeled cart, but it was not large enough. As the only vehicle, it made little sense for a place so near the docks, and there were six horses and multiple harnesses.

Chane stepped back outside and circled the stable all the way to the alley at the alcove's back. Just around the left side, he found a large wagon in the alley and hurried over to inspect it.

The seat was long and thick. The entire bed was walled with planks that had outer brackets for lashing a tarp over cargo. Folded canvas was stacked in the back. It was perfect, except for two things.

The front left wheel was chained down to an iron ring embedded in the alley's cobble. Chane decided to wait on breaking that until he was fully ready to leave. The other problem became evident as he walked back to the stable's rear door.

To harness the horses, he would have to lead them out to the wagon. He had expected to be able to do so inside, and then open the main front doors and drive off. Now he would have to harness two horses, one by one, in the open. If he was seen at this time of night, someone might question what he was doing.

He had no further options except to search elsewhere, hoping for something more accessible, but that seemed unlikely. Besides, once he was off, even if someone found the wagon and horses missing at dawn, they would not likely trace it to a caravan station with wagons and teams of its own. He simply needed to hurry and finish without being seen.

Chane piled the harnesses on the wagon seat and returned to lead the black gelding out. It followed him without protest, and he harnessed the animal quietly. When he hurried back into the stable for the bay mare, she nickered softly as he took her halter.

"Shhhh," he murmured, stroking her velvet nose.

She followed him out, and he backed her into position beside the gelding. As he buckled down the last of her harness, the barest creak carried through the quiet alley.

"Is someone there?" a masculine voice called.

Chane slipped around the wagon and flattened against the building's backside.

Footsteps followed, and a stocky man with a dark beard and tied-back hair, both traced with gray, came around the alcove's corner. He stopped, spotting Chane immediately. At first, he appeared more surprised than concerned. Perhaps theft was not common here.

"What are you doing?" he asked, and when Chane did not answer, his expression clouded. "Don't you move!"

In another breath, the stable keeper would shout for the authorities.

Chane bolted along the building's side, but before he reached the corner, the man ducked back out of sight. Chane rounded into the alcove, and the tines of a pitchfork drove for his face. He twisted to the side, though an outside tine slid along his temple.

A slight sting rose as the skin beneath his hair split. He grabbed the fork's base with his left hand, and another tine's tip sc.r.a.ped along his wrist. When he struck out, his right fist caught the stable keeper on the cheekbone. The heavy man toppled backward through the open rear door as Chane jerked the pitchfork away.

And the beast inside of him struggled to awaken.

Chane stood staring as the man stirred limply just inside the doorway. All he wanted was another kill, another true moment as it should be. Perhaps it would be his last chance. No one would know, even Wynn, except . . .

Even the beast seemed only dully piqued, as if groggy from dormancy. In its strange complacency, reason plagued Chane.

Once he returned to the caravan station, they would not leave straight off. A stolen wagon was one thing; a dead man was something else. It might bring a more thorough search for a perpetrator.

The beast inside of him suddenly became more aware, and wailed in frustration.

Chane bit down, but there was nothing between his teeth. He could haul the body away in the wagon, dump it along the sh.o.r.e where it would take longer to discover, and return safely to Wynn.

He still hesitated, for Wynn had forbidden him to kill any sentient being.

No . . . she had forbidden him to kill in order to feed.

Chane had struggled and fought with himself to follow her wishes. Even if he left the stable keeper alive but unconscious, the moment the man woke, he would raise the alarm.

The beast within him wobbled as it rose. Shaking off some lethargy, it lunged to the limits of its chains.

Chane reached down and grabbed the man's head in both hands. With one quick wrench, he broke the stable master's neck. The man's body tensed once all over and went slack upon the stable's straw.

The beast shrieked. Chane winced, as if hearing-feeling-its rage at being denied.

He hauled himself up the doorframe and dragged the body out to toss it in the wagon's back. He jerked a tarp across, took one last look around the stable, and grabbed a sack of oats, a bucket, and a pile of blankets.

Every motion was mechanical, but inside, Chane ached from what he had not done more than for what he had done. One brief chance at release, for his own need, and he had not taken it.

Finally, he picked up a heavy shovel leaning against one wall and slammed the sharp end against the chain holding the front wheel. It broke easily, but so did the shovel. He tossed the shovel in the wagon and climbed aboard, grabbing and flicking the reins.

Driving the wagon south out of town, he went even farther than where he judged the caravan station lay. He dumped the body over the rock lip above the sh.o.r.e, not bothering to watch it splash into the water, and tossed the broken shovel after it. When he turned inland over the rough ground, finding the road back toward the city, it was not long before he spotted the campfires in the night.

Chane had acquired what they needed. At least in part, he had done so as Wynn required.

Wynn was quite satisfied as she led the way back carrying three heavy skins of fresh water. Ore-Locks hauled a burlap sack nearly filled with potatoes, carrots, and some strange type of apple she'd never seen before. And, of course, there was more smoked fish.

They'd also found speckled eggs, a clay jar of olives in their own oil, and a little goat cheese sealed in wax. If Chane was successful, they could also scavenge seaside driftwood to bring, should they have trouble with dry firewood along the way.

When they reached the caravan camp, fewer people were up and about. Some had settled into bedrolls around the embers of dying fires. Wynn saw no sign of Chane anywhere.

What would they do if he couldn't acquire transportation that could be covered during the day?

"Here he comes," Ore-Locks said. "But why is he . . . ?"

Ore-Locks didn't finish as Wynn followed his gaze.

Chane drove a wagon along the dirt road. He wasn't coming from the city, but rather from the south. He pulled up, tied off the reins, and dropped to the ground. Two fine young horses in new harnesses were hooked to the large wagon with high sides and a thick rear gate. This was more than what Wynn expected, and her pleasant surprise turned to discomfort.

"How much did you have to pay?" she asked quietly.

"Nothing in coin," he answered. "I traded for it."

"Traded?" she echoed. "Traded what?"

Her discomfort grew when he didn't answer straight off.

"Some of Welstiel's rods," he said. "The metal alone is worth a good deal."

Wynn had never liked that Chane kept all of Welstiel's arcane possessions. Trading away any of them was fine with her, especially if someone was going to melt them down for their metal.

She smiled, patting the neck of a pretty bay mare. "Well done. You're getting as good at barter as Ore-Locks."

Then she noticed a dark line running out of his sleeve and down to the palm of his hand.

"Are you hurt?"

"It is nothing," he said, turning away. "We should get the wagon ready."

Just before dawn, Chane lay curled in the wagon's covered bed, listening to the bustle of team masters preparing the caravan to leave. Ore-Locks, Wynn, and even Shade were up on the front bench, ready to head out.

No one had come looking for the wagon or horses.

Chane still wore his heavy cloak and had put on the gloves and scarf, as well. The mask and gla.s.ses lay next to his head, along with both of his swords. Should the caravan be attacked during daylight, he would know it, hear it, and be ready.

He pulled the narrow, leather-bound box from Welstiel's pack and opened it, taking out a gla.s.s vial containing the violet concoction.

"We're off," Wynn said, though not to him.

Ore-Locks grunted acknowledgment as the wagon lurched forward.

Chane downed part of the vial's contents and then returned it to the padded box. He could already sense the burning rays of the sun just beyond the canvas above him.

It would be a long day.

CHAPTER 9.

The monotonous creak of wagon wheels mixed with clopping hoofs still echoed in Wynn's head when they set up camp each night. One day blurred into the next until the caravan stopped for two days to repair a wagon wheel, and she realized that more than half a moon had pa.s.sed.

The line of wagons traversed an expansive valley between high ridges, rocking along on a northeasterly inland path. Gra.s.s-covered stone hills flowed down into intermittent woods of wild green brush, and the trees marked the landscape difference most of all. There were fewer firs and pines, as in the Numan lands, and far more ma.s.sive, leafy, deciduous growths. The hardened dirt road was so old that it often exposed packed stones uncovered by years of use and rainfall.

Like the seasons' rhythms, Wynn's daily life changed from her time aboard the ships. She drove the wagon all day while Chane and Ore-Locks slept in the back, under cover, and on opposite sides of the wagon. Then they woke to stand guard all night.

Shade napped only during the day, perched upon the wagon's bench with Wynn, but she never seemed to fully sleep. Often, she would suddenly lift her head, going rigid all over as she stared into the wild. It happened most when they pa.s.sed through densely wooded regions. Her vigilance began making Wynn more nervous in having left civilization. And too often, Wynn began peering into the trees as well, waiting to hear a voice or voices of the Fay rise in her thoughts.

But the trees were silent, and the wagon rolled on. Soon the isolated woods thickened into even denser forests between the open fields and hills.

One day, as dusk approached, Chane and Ore-Locks were asleep in the back when Wynn spotted a side road beyond the wagon line's head. Another appeared shortly after on the other side. They'd come to a main fork.

The chieftain, A'drin, shouted from ahead for a halt. He came striding back to Wynn's wagon, his heavy braid swinging as he walked, and he pointed to the left, northeasterly path.

"That leads to Lhoin'na lands and a'Ghrihln'na," he said. "Keep to the road, and you'll come to an open plain. Their forest proper is beyond it, and the capital not much farther."

A'drin gestured toward the southeast fork on the right.

"We've a few stops along the valley's southern foothills." He glanced at Shade, then back at Wynn, and a wry smile spread across his mouth. "Tell your pale friend and the dwarf they might not be missed. Some of my men have grown lazy, sleeping through the nights."

"Thank you for everything," Wynn replied, though she was puzzled. Apparently the caravan wasn't bound for Lhoin'na lands; perhaps they had no cargo to trade there.

A'drin nodded, still smiling, and turned away. But he paused, glancing northward with a frown.

"Lhoin'na patrollers are . . . strict about anyone crossing the plain."

"What do you mean?"

He shrugged. "Never understood it. They allow no blood spilled there, neither for hunting nor injury. Keep any weapons sheathed or stored, and take it slow, at a comfortable pace."

His words tickled something at the back of Wynn's mind-something about an open field on the way to an elven forest. She couldn't remember what it was, let alone where she'd heard . . . whatever she couldn't remember.

"You don't know why?" she asked.

"For any people, the reasons for some old ways can be long forgotten. All that's left is a tradition. But polite as the elves are in their way, they take this one seriously."

Wynn nodded, anxious without knowing why. A'drin returned a curt bow and walked away. When the caravan rolled on and Wynn reached the fork, she guided the wagon out of the line and onto the side road.

Shade immediately rose on the bench, ears stiff as she watched the caravan leave them behind. She turned about, pressing her shoulder against Wynn and exhaling two sharp huffs.

-stay . . . Wynn . . . people- With those words came another flash of the night the Fay had a.s.saulted Wynn.

"This is the only way," she answered, but even she watched the trees closely.

The farther they went, the more Shade fidgeted, trying to watch everywhere at once. But in less time than expected, a break in the forest appeared ahead. Wynn pulled the horses to a halt where the trees stopped.

An open plain of tall gra.s.s gently undulated with tans and traces of yellow-green. Wynn thought she spotted hints of white wildflowers, but they were too hidden to see clearly. Farther out, the edge of a vast forest, more overwhelming than the one she left, stretched both ways beyond sight.

At first, the trees didn't seem too far away, but then Wynn realized why. Where the road entered between them, it looked like no more than a thread in width. The tallest of those trees were immense, ancient sentinels.

Wynn had never been here before, but the sight was eerily familiar.

Shade huffed again, looking off to the left as she shoved in closer against Wynn. A dull, distant pounding grew in volume.

Three riders came across the gra.s.sy plain at a full gallop. The rear pair held their reins one-handed, and gripped long, wooden poles in the other. The leader appeared to hold only a bow in his free grip. But as they raced nearer, the first thing Wynn noticed about the riders themselves was their hair and eyes.

Oversized and teardrop-shaped, their amber irises glowed in the falling sun's light. All three had their wheat- or sand-colored hair pulled up and back in high tails held by single rings, and the narrow tips of their tall ears were plain to see. They were garbed in tawny leather vestments with swirling steel garnishes that matched sparkling spaulders on their shoulders. Running diagonal over their chests, each bore a sash the color of pale gold. As they drew closer, slightly curved sword hilts became visible, protruding over their right shoulders.