Deepwood: Karavans # 2 (10 page)

She knew his scream.

Ah, Mother… O, Mother of Moons … Mother Mother-Mother…

She was torn, torn, torn. A baby here. A son there.

A baby, safe within a ring; Rhuan had told her so. And a son in pain.

“I have to,” she gasped. “I must.”

“Audrun—”

Her body insisted, and her heart, and her soul. “I have to go.” She thrust the child into his arms. “Take her. Take her. Keep her safe.”

“Audrun!”

“That’s Gillan!” she cried. “That’s my
son
.”

“Audrun, no!”

She entrusted him with what was precious to her. She left the child, left the man, left the dreya ring. She ran.

Mother
, she prayed,
O Sweet Mother, save my son.

W
HEN DAVYN FIRST saw the smudge of trees along the horizon, his pulse quickened. He thought he recalled the guide shouting at them through the storm, saying something about a forest providing some shelter for them; was it here the Shoia had carried the smallest of the children, searching for safety? He had seen nothing of a forest as he’d stood upon the chest inside the wagon, but the land was not entirely flat.

Davyn broke into a jog. If the guide had gotten Torvic and Megritte to the forest, he may have done the same for Ellica and Gillan, and possibly even Audrun. Perhaps only
he
had been caught in the worst of the storm and the rest were safe.

Fear began to recede. Apprehension still rode him, but the idea that the others were safe became fixed in his mind. For some distance hope and the beginnings of relief carried him easily, but then his body began to flag. He dropped to a walk, stretching strides to cover
more ground, but before long that, too, seemed to require too much strength, more endurance than he had. Davyn, panting, stopped, gulped water, caught his breath, then forced himself into a jog once again. He would go in spurts, as a man rode a horse crosscountry: walk, trot, gallop; walk, trot, gallop. It didn’t spend the horse unnecessarily, but steady changes of pace covered ground.

Possibly,
possibly
, all were safe. Possibly they were together somewhere in that forest, praying to the Mother for
his
safety.

That made Davyn grin. All his worry for naught; only
he
had been in danger while the others took shelter from the worst of the terrible storm. And he had survived. He was uninjured. They would be together again, a family again, and though the oxen were dead and the wagon canopy destroyed, the wagon itself was whole—or would be, when he changed the cracked axle for the new one—and they could walk back to the settlement. There they might be able to find a team of mules or horses to borrow long enough to pull the wagon back to the tent village. Audrun, Ellica, and the youngest could remain there with others while he and Gillan took the team to the wagon, repaired it, and returned to the settlement. He thought it likely that their journey to Atalanda would be delayed a good three or four weeks, but the baby wasn’t due for another four months. They had time. Plenty of time.

In a much better frame of mind, Davyn jogged onward
toward the forest, the thick, massive canopy of trees growing closer, clearer, larger along the horizon.

TORVIC HISSED AT Megrite, “
Be quiet
.” And when the fear in her eyes told him she might very well cry out in reaction to the terrible scream, he pressed both his hands over her mouth. “No, Meggie. Be quiet.” He glanced over his shoulder, saw rainwater dripping from leaves, drooping tree limbs. But there was no sound—no sound at all. In the wake of the high-pitched scream, everything had stilled. The world seemed to have simply
stopped.

Megritte reached up and tried to peel his fingers from her mouth. He leaned very close, very close, and whispered to her, “We need to hide. Go back in the rocks, Meggie. Go back where we were.”

She climbed unsteadily up into the crevice. There was, once again, just enough room for him. Torvic gathered in folds of fabric, pulling the blankets and oilcloth up again, this time not as shelter but as shield. Hunched next to him, Megritte pressed close. “We have to find Mam and Da. You said.”

Sound began again. Chirps and chitters, clicking. A breeze ran through the trees, pushing leaves against one another in a hissing susurration. The gloom intensified, as if the sun—the
suns
—were sliding below the treetops.

“Torvic, we have to go. You
said.”

“Not now.” It came out trembling. Torvic pressed his lips together and tried again, whispering. “Not now, Meggie. Later.”

The tears had stopped, but her voice sounded pinched. “What made that noise?”

“I don’t know.” The stone beneath his buttocks was chill. He scooted closer to his sister. “We’ll wait a bit, Meggie. Then we’ll go look for Mam and Da.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

TIMMON AND ALORN, conscious again, were wind-battered, filthy, scraped, and bruised, but otherwise whole. Bethid handed around the waterskin she’d found and told them to stay put; there was no reason they should do anything other than sit still and catch their breath. Both young men were pale and shaken, and dark-haired, brown-eyed Alorn nursed a long cut above one eyebrow while Timmon, lanky and long-limbed, with blue eyes and light brown hair, pressed a portion of his tunic against his swollen bottom lip to stem the bleeding. In the meantime, those tent dwellers who had fled the settlement began to return, straggling in. Bethid, seeing their shocked expressions, hearing despairing voices, was glad she had a task in looking after her fellow couriers. Others, those who had wisely followed instructions given out by her and Mikal as the storm
swept down, now discovered that nothing in the world was left to them save their lives and the clothing on their bodies.

Too much, Bethid knew; simply too much for anyone to wholly grasp, to assimilate. But only days before a party of brutal Hecari warriors had arrived at the tent village, methodically killing one person in ten: men, women, children. They had also set fire to as many tents, culling dwelling places as well. In the days afterward, bodies were buried following various rites and rituals to see the dead safely across the river into a better afterworld, and burned tents were searched for what might have survived the decimation. On the heels of that had come Alisanos, swallowing acre after acre, mile after mile, its power made visible and tangible by the terrible storm.

Brodhi had said the deepwood was now but a halfmile away.

A chill pimpled her flesh. Bethid rubbed her upper arms vigorously. This was utter devastation, the tents left whole by the Hecari blown down, blown apart, tattered by and scattered on the wind. Oilcloth was gone, save portions that had been caught under something heavy, as had happened with the couriers’ common tent, weighted by the senseless bodies of Alorn and Timmon.

She flicked a brief investigatory glance at both young men, judged them steady enough, then rose and began to peel back the puddled oilcloth that had swaddled them to see if anything remained. Sleeping
pallets were gone, as were belongings. None of their rich blue courier cloaks remained, nor the silver badges of their office. She found two of the iron hooks that had hung from the Mother Rib of the tent, providing storage for cloaks and clothing, but little else. The ground beneath the remains of the tent was wet from the rain, scoured by the wind. Of the wooden pole framework, the scaffolding over which oilcoth had been lashed, only one pole remained in sight.

Bethid sighed, dropping the corner of heavy fabric. The common tent had stood on the edges of the settlement, and before it, stretching in all directions, was the detritus of lives altered forever. Here and there a woman knelt in the storm-purged place where a tent had stood, grasping children to her. Men walked through the lightning-scorched field of debris, searching out the footpaths, the landmarks, in hope of tracking belongings. Little was left to find.

Her mouth twisted grimly.
We meant to start a rebellion, to fight the Hecari… now we’ve something else to deal with
. She glanced sharply at her fellow couriers, still nursing their wounds. They had, with her, with Mikal, even Brodhi, discussed the possibility of a Sancorran revolt begun very quietly, very slowly, by careful, subtle couriers. Could they begin again? Could they continue to lay plans to take back Sancorra from the enemy?

But Alisanos had moved. Sancorra now had an enemy far less predictable than the Hecari.

“Mother of Moons,” Bethid muttered, “there has to
be a way. There must be.” But she knew that those who had survived both Hecari and the incursions of Alisanos would not now be willing to consider rebellion. She frowned, pondering. And then, abruptly, an idea unfolded before her. For a moment Bethid could not believe it herself, but with further consideration, layer by layer, thought by thought, a plan knitted itself together. “Stay here,” she told her fellow couriers, gesturing with her hand. “No need to move; I’ll see about more water, and food.”

Bethid did not wait for any protests from Timmon and Alorn, though she wasn’t certain any would come. She strode quickly across the settlement grounds, intent on finding Mikal. And Jorda—he was a natural leader, and could accomplish things she might not be able to, being small, slight, and a woman.

There was also Brodhi to find. The plan
required
Brodhi.

SHE RAN. SHE fell numerous times, tripped by tangled vines, exposed roots, thick ground cover, sharp-edged grass. Her legs and arms stung; her face burned. Blood was in her mouth. She spat, spat again, then rubbed haphazardly at her chin even as she ran. Once again she fell; once again she thrust her body upward, forced her body to keep moving, to ignore all physical insults. Cuts, scrapes, bruises … all these would heal. Gillan might not, were he injured.
And she feared he might be, recalling his scream. It rang in her memory, blotting out all other thought.

“Audrun!”

The guide. She clamped her teeth together. She could not spare an answer. Dared not; it would take time, and he would find her, would very likely insist she return to the dreya ring. She could not do so. Not with Gillan, her firstborn, in danger. Let the guide tend the infant while she tended her eldest.

“Audrun!”

Ah, Mother, but it was tempting to slow, to halt, to answer his summons. But the infant—no, she had a name:
Sarith
—was safe; Rhuan had said so, had promised it, upon entry into the ring. Gillan was not.