Amber (36 page)

Kitty closed her eyes and whispered, ‘Oh, please don’t make me choose.’

‘Kitty? What’s the matter?’

She opened her eyes. Simon was standing on the other side of the fire, the billy in his hand.

‘Nothing.’ She set the billy over the flames and added a good pinch of salt to the oats and water.

‘It didn’t look like nothing,’ Simon remarked as he positioned the bread around the edge of the fire. ‘You’re worried about what Rian is going to say, aren’t you?’

‘Is it that obvious?’

‘To me it is, yes.’

Kitty sat back on her heels. ‘Oh, Simon, I want to see him so much it hurts, it actually physically
hurts
. But I’m terrified. What if he doesn’t, well, what if he won’t…’ She trailed off, unwilling to actually say it aloud.

Simon jabbed a stick into the billy and gave the oats a vigorous stir. ‘Why don’t you try praying about it?’ He set the stick aside and gave Kitty a long, fond and slightly frustrated look. ‘Go on, try it. You’ve nothing to lose. And this is me talking now, not Simon Bullock the CMS missionary.’

‘Pray to God?’ Kitty said disbelievingly.

‘You can pray to whomever or whatever you like,’ Simon replied. ‘Just as long as you do pray. You might find that it stops things going around and around in your mind. You
might
find that it gives you a bit of, well, balance.’

Balance, Kitty thought wistfully. Yes, that would be nice.

They crossed the Kawakawa three miles upstream, at a sweeping curve where the channel widened and the river spread out and became less deep. But the horses still had to swim part of the way, and Kitty found the moment when Tio’s hooves left the riverbed and she became waterborne extremely unnerving. Tio clearly did, too: her ears flattened against her skull and the powerful muscles of her shoulders pumped as she struck out for the far bank. Kitty slid out of the saddle and swam jerkily alongside, trying to hold Amber securely in place on Tio’s back.

‘All right?’ Kitty called out to Simon who, like her, had dismounted and was hanging grimly onto Horo’s mane. He nodded quickly, too busy trying to remain upright to speak.

The water was swift in the middle of the channel, and surprisingly cold. Glancing back, Kitty saw with a surge of fear that the current had already swept them some distance downstream. She looked ahead again and, gritting her teeth, concentrated on keeping Amber in the saddle and her own legs out of the way of Tio’s.

But a minute later Tio stumbled as her hooves struck the riverbed and she righted herself, then lunged up the incline to the bank. On dry land she shook herself, dislodging Amber, who slid to the ground.

Kitty picked her up and hugged her, and together they watched as Horo launched himself out of the river and staggered up the bank, dragging Simon along beside him. Kitty’s hands and feet were numb with cold and she could hear her own teeth chattering.

They sat on the bank in silence, all three of them, river water running out of their clothes, panting as they regained their breath. A few feet away the horses quickly settled, then bent their heads to graze.

‘I didn’t realise it would be so cold,’ Simon gasped.

‘No,’ Kitty replied, ‘but at least it isn’t raining any more.’

Simon looked at her and suddenly they were laughing like
loons, tears running down their faces as the fear and tension drained away. Amber laughed too, but as she was pointing at them they could only assume she was laughing
at
them, not with them. Which only made them laugh harder.

Eventually they managed to compose themselves.

Simon suggested, ‘Shall we walk for a while, to warm up and try to dry off a bit?’

Kitty nodded; her backside was still sore and she didn’t relish sitting on it in soaking wet trousers.

As they picked their way across the boggy ground that bordered the river, leading the horses behind them, a dark figure appeared unseen on the far bank. It crouched, watching for several minutes until the small party ahead had disappeared from sight, then slipped soundlessly into the swollen, fast-flowing waters.

By midday Kitty and Simon were feeling better, and certainly a lot warmer, so decided to push on for another hour or so before they stopped to eat. Ahead of them lay an expanse of hills and valleys clad in thick bush, and they were both beginning to doubt now that they would make Waikare by nightfall.

‘We could follow the coastline,’ Simon said as they repacked the saddlebags after they finally did stop. ‘Although I doubt that would be any quicker. I’ve been into some of those bays by sea and they’re fairly rugged. A lot of them don’t even have beaches, just cliffs.’

‘No,’ Kitty said as she tightened Tio’s surcingle. ‘I think it’s better that we stick to the tracks and keep going overland. At least we know the tracks actually go somewhere.’

They had been following the narrow but distinct paths that local Maoris had worn across the landscape for so long that the ancestors who had originally walked them were remembered only in whakapapa and legend. Haunui had done his best to include in his map all the tracks he knew of, but had admitted that he hadn’t walked them all himself and didn’t know where
some of them led. He had, however, included as many landmarks as he could recall, and they were using these as a guide.

Late in the afternoon, just as the sun began its descent behind the forested hills at their backs, they came across a small group of Maoris walking along the track towards them—an elderly man and woman, two younger women carrying several large ketes, and three children. The old man had a bundle of blankets rolled up and tied to his back. Kitty and Simon pulled off the track to let them pass, but the old man signalled to his companions to stop.

‘Good day,’ he said in Maori.

Kitty saw that he had only one eye, and a hollow of knotted scar tissue where the other one should have been. He reminded her strongly of Wai’s assumed father, Tupehu, and for a moment she felt disconcerted.

‘Good day, Koro,’ Simon replied, also in Maori.

‘What is your destination?’ the old man asked.

Simon said, ‘We are heading for Waikare.’

The women glanced at each other and almost imperceptibly shook their heads.

The old man hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘Waikare is not a good place today.’

‘In what way, Koro?’ Simon asked uneasily.

Grunting, the old man adjusted the bundle on his back. ‘There has been a battle there. Of sorts. The Queen’s men came and burned the Kapotai pa to the ground.’

Simon shot a worried look at Kitty, then said to the old man, ‘When was that? When was this battle?’

‘At dawn.’

‘Today?’

‘Yesterday.’

Simon leaned forward in his saddle. ‘And are you Te Kapotai yourselves? Were you in the battle?’

One of the younger women spoke up. ‘No. We were only visiting. But we saw it.’

The old man frowned at her for interrupting. ‘The pa has gone and so have the Kapotai people. But they are not far away and they are angry. You Pakeha should watch out for yourselves.’ Then his wrinkled face relaxed. ‘But no matter. They will build another pa. Little was lost.’ He laughed and tapped his head. ‘Those Queen’s men in their little boats!’

And with that he walked on, chuckling to himself.

The others followed, one of the children giving a little wave to Amber, who waggled her fingers in reply.

When they were out of earshot, Simon said, ‘I wonder what he meant by that? The comment about the boats?’

Kitty shrugged. ‘Obviously Major Bridge has launched his attack. And that means Rian won’t be far away.’

‘
Probably
won’t be far away,’ Simon amended, not wanting Kitty to get her hopes up.

Kitty urged Tio back onto the track. ‘I wonder how much further it is? We should have asked the old man.’

‘We should be able to see for ourselves soon. We’ve been travelling uphill for a while now, so with luck we’ll come across a vantage point. Or even a lookout.’

But the bush at the summit of the hill they had been climbing was as dense as it had been in the valley below. They rode for another hour and finally came to a clearing on the eastern aspect of a hill that afforded them a view of the terrain ahead, but by then it was too dark to make out much more than a dimly gleaming stretch of water. In the darkness, they could only assume that they were looking down on the Waikare River, where the Kapotai pa now lay in ashes.

‘Mimi,’ Amber announced. It was early next morning and Simon had gone in search of water. But when Kitty bent to help Amber
with the buttons on her trousers, she pushed her away and said, ‘No!’

‘Do you want to do it by yourself?’

‘Ae.
Myself!
’

Kitty rolled her eyes; it was wonderful that Amber was learning to manage her own toileting, but rather time-consuming and slightly pointless since she hadn’t yet got the hang of doing up her own buttons. She watched as Amber ducked behind a ponga to do her business in private.

She waited for several minutes, then called, ‘Amber, are you all right?’

There was no answer.

‘Sweetheart? Do you need any help?’

Still nothing. Kitty turned and pushed her way around to the other side of the ponga.

Amber had gone.

Kitty gave a moan that was half-panic and half-fear, and crouched to peer beneath the ponga’s drooping, browning branches in case Amber had crawled under there. She straightened, then turned in a full circle, but could see no sign of the little girl. A scream rose up in her throat but she stifled it, forcing herself to stand very still and listen.

At first all she could hear were the sounds of the forest—the wet wind in the taller branches, the whisper and rustle of leaves heavy with the rain from the day before, and the gurgle of some invisible stream not far away. And then she heard it, a faint crackling of twigs and branches as something large moved through the bush, heading away from her. She lunged after it.

But common sense somehow prevailed over her terror and she stopped and slid Haunui’s pistol from her saddlebag. With hands that were shaking with shock, she fumbled in powder and a ball, then jammed the pistol into her belt, hoping she wouldn’t blow a hole in her own thigh.

She set off again, this time moving stealthily and straining to listen for the tell-tale noises ahead of her, the sounds she knew in her heart were being made by a war-crazed and bloodthirsty rebel warrior dragging her precious daughter to certain death.

At one point she thought she saw a flash of something in the bush beyond, and realised that the trees had thinned slightly and that she was approaching another track. A moment later she had stepped onto it and saw, up ahead, a figure carrying a smaller one clamped under its arm like a rolled-up mat. A noose of terror tightened around Kitty’s heart.

‘
Stop!
’ she cried.

But the figure merely broke into a jog, although not before Kitty had realised that Amber’s abductor was a woman, and that there was something vaguely familiar about her heavy but powerful gait. She set off after them, her boots slipping and sliding on the muddy track.

She had been running for almost five minutes when she came to a fork and knelt to inspect the mud for footprints: they were there, a clear set made by wide bare feet, but where the track branched they stopped, as though whoever had made them had vanished into thin air. Kitty stifled a groan and remained very still, straining to hear any sound that might indicate the direction the abductor had taken. But there were only the normal rustling sounds of the bush.

After a long minute Kitty stood and walked a couple of paces along the left-hand track, looking for bent branches, broken twigs, fresh fallen leaves—any sign that might suggest something had recently passed by. But there was nothing. She did the same along the other track, but again there was nothing. She bit her lip and blinked back tears, wishing she had Hawk with her—Hawk, who could track anything anywhere.

The sharp crack of a twig made her whirl around, aiming her pistol at the undergrowth. Holding her breath, she steadied her
pistol hand with the other, but when nothing more happened, she stepped forward cautiously and peered into the bushes.

A kiwi stared back up at her, its small black eyes blinking resentfully in the sunlight before it turned and shuffled further into the gloom, presumably to return to sleep.

Kitty let her breath out, turned to the fork in the track again and withdrew from her jacket a pocket compass she’d purchased in Auckland. She flipped up the smooth brass lid and watched as the needle wavered, then settled. Then she turned the compass so that the needle sat over the reading for north, which told her that the left-hand track headed south-west, while the other went north-west. Neither direction could be guaranteed, of course, because the tracks could change direction at any stage, but Kitty felt a surge of hope as she contemplated the track on the right. Hadn’t Haunui mentioned a rumour about Heke and Kawiti building a new pa at Ohaeawai? And Ohaeawai, she knew, was inland and slightly south-west of Paihia, which meant that it lay directly north-west of where she was now. If whoever had Amber was in cahoots with the rebel Maoris—and who else was likely to steal a child belonging to Pakehas?—then it stood to reason that they were probably heading for Ohaeawai. Kitty pocketed the compass and ran off along the right-hand track, praying that the abductor was in fact ahead of her.

After more than forty minutes, her lungs felt as though they might tear themselves out of her chest and the stitch in her side had become unbearable. Cursing her diminished physical fitness, she slowed and then stopped, bent at the waist and hoicking inelegantly to clear her throat. Then all of a sudden she remembered Simon. He would surely have returned to their camp by now and be wondering where on earth she and Amber had got to. Would he come looking for them? She knew he’d be desperately worried, and cursed herself for not thinking to leave even a scribbled note.

She straightened and stretched painfully, the muscles made stiff from riding complaining mightily at being exerted even further, and then took a moment to review her surroundings. Her resting place was on the crest of a steep hill, and in the gully below ran a small stream bordered by rocks and scrub and, a short distance upstream, a wide fan of what appeared to be freshly fallen debris. A movement caught her eye and she squinted, her heart leaping as Amber’s kidnapper stepped out of the scrub and knelt to drink from the stream. The little girl had a rope tied around her neck and, when she made a move to break away, the kidnapper viciously jerked the rope and Amber sprawled onto her side.