Mastiff (9 page)

Tunstall and I froze. Here the wood opened on a clearing some five hundred yards or so across, a place where folk might have games and contests. That was not Achoo’s concern, though. She looked up at me and whined. She had the prince’s scent again!

I went to her. Tunstall followed in my footsteps. After two year of working with Achoo, we knew to keep our own scents to as thin a path as we could, that we might not interfere with what had caught her attention. There, in the bare earth where yet another half-magicked trail faded in and out of sight over the edge of the land, we found the footprints of horses.

Tunstall walked along the cliff another hundred feet and came back as Achoo followed her drift of scent thirty feet inland. “Someone waited with mounts back there,” Tunstall said when he reached me. His voice was tense, but he spoke calmly. Achoo did better if she didn’t think we were worked up. “On the grass. Hard to tell how many riders and how many horses without mounts there. Is it worthwhile to look down by the water?”

Achoo was moving in circles. She sniffed the air and glanced at us, as she did when she was on the track. I ground my teeth. We dared not let that trail get colder, but we needed all the evidence we could get, too.

“I think we’d better keep on the land trail,” I told him. “We know they took to the sea back at the palace. Now we know they came ashore and met someone here, then rode east. We’ll have to send someone to look at that beach—there’s only two of us now, and if they have a crew and we’re caught, we might never get word to the others that the prince is alive.”

“Right, then,” Tunstall replied. Hurriedly he set up a trail sign to let other searchers find the landing point below.

I produced one of the prince’s loincloths and let Achoo smell. She gave me a look as if to say, “Do you
really
think I need a reminder in such a short time?” She gave it the barest of sniffs, looked scornfully at me again, then trotted off across the grass. We followed, crossing the clearing to enter the trees. This was the forest that was left natural for hunters and game.
Now
there was brush and tree branches to dodge, and vines to flay us like whips. I went flat on my face twice, once on dry ground, once as I crossed the stream that was a play area for ladies further south. Half of me got soaked as the other half struck the bank on the far side. Tunstall called softly, “Cooper? This is no time for a bath.”

I told him what he might do with himself and his bath. The sorry old guttersnake’s by-blow only laughed at me and offered me one of his large handkerchiefs. As quietly as I could I escaped the stream and wiped the mud off. Tunstall offered me the small bottle of mead he always carries in case someone needs warming up, but I shook my head. I don’t like to drink at all when I’m on duty, even when it might warm me. Tunstall put the bottle away as I told Achoo to move on.

It was the trotting to keep up with her that warmed my poor sodden legs and helped to dry my breeches out some. We were two miles past the stream when we came to the wall that enclosed the grounds for the Summer Palace. We halted to stare, Tunstall whistling low with admiration. We raised both of our stone lamps to view it.

The hole the enemy’s mage had blown through it was about five horses wide. Seemingly the kidnappers didn’t worry about anyone catching them by then.

Achoo didn’t want to wait even for the scant time we would have taken to survey the broken wall. The prince’s scent must have been stronger than ever. She dashed across the road north and into the woods on its far side. Tunstall and I followed, spotting horse tracks that cut across the beaten earth of the main road in the same direction. We halted briefly inside the trees to get our bearings.

I knew his thinking. One lamp would be enough to see the trail while two might draw attention if the enemy was near. I also saw him grimace and rub his knees. They were hurting him, then. He looked tired, though I knew he’d deny it if I asked. I pretended not to see as he took a drink from the flask. The mead would ease any pain in bones that had been broken and healed too often for healing to really work anymore. “How far to the river?” Tunstall asked as he tucked his stone lamp away.

I can never tell if he is testing me or if he doesn’t know. If he is testing me, I wish he would stop. I have not been a Puppy, nor he my training Dog, for four years. I called the map to my memory. I knew it because Achoo and I had been Hunting a gem thief between Blue Harbor and Arenaver last winter. “A mile and a half to the Ware,” I said.

We covered the next mile in silence. We didn’t talk, but even without consulting about it, we slowed to a walk at the same time, while I whistled Achoo back to me. Then I wrapped all but a thumb’s length of my stone lamp in the hem of my tunic. The three of us approached the river as quietly as we could manage. We had no idea of how far behind the enemy we were. If they were on the riverbank, awaiting a boat or ferry, we wanted our arrival to be a surprise. If they outnumbered us, it would be even better if they didn’t see us split up, one to watch and the other to go for help.

At last we came out of the trees. We stood near the Ware River on an open slope cleared by Crown foresters so bandits couldn’t hide close to the water. We looked up and down our side of the river. No one, riders or ferries, was visible in the half-moon’s light. We heard only the river’s constant rush as it flowed down to the Tellerun. As far as we could tell, there were no humans but us about.

Still, we made our way down to the water slowly. The glimmer of light from my shrouded lamp revealed only a couple of feet ahead of us. Suddenly Achoo whined and butted in between Tunstall and me, her way of telling us something bad was near. Then the smell hit my nose, bringing me up short. It was a tripe-wringing mix of burned meat, scorched leather, and hot metal.

Achoo began to growl, hackles up.
“Diamlah,”
I whispered as Tunstall drew his baton. We moved forward slowly until we discovered a large, stinking pile, or puddle. “Let’s have some light, Cooper,” said Tunstall. “Any Rat is long gone from here. Any witnesses, too, I’ll wager.”

We both raised our lamps so we could better see the nastiness that was before us. It was a great soup that lay on the grass, trickling slowly into the river. I stared at it, fascinated. I recognized pieces of metal from horses’ tack, metal amulets and jewelry, and swords and daggers, but naught that was leather, cloth, or skin.

“Mistress Fea was
melted
,” the queen had said.

Tunstall ran back to the trees. He returned to shove a long, leafless branch at me. He carried one of his own. “Keep the evidence out of the river, Cooper!” he ordered.

I set my rock on the ground, as Tunstall did his, and began to drag the solid pieces from the mess with my stick. The swords might be recognized, not to mention the jewelry. I swallowed my gorge, which was trying to come up, and thrust the sludge aside to find anything that might be under it.

Tunstall was cursing under his breath. “Chaos take the mage that did this, Cooper,” he said. He coughed, and went on, “No decent burial for these cracked mumpers.”

I stood away from the mess. It was beginning to eat at my branch. “Tunstall,” I said, holding the length of wood up for him to see.

He looked at his own half-melted stick. “Gods help us if that poor lad’s in this,” he said.

“Take heart,” I told him. “Look at Achoo.” She was going back and forth along the bank a few feet away, sniffing the ground and the air, whining. “Seemingly whoever did this took His Highness on another boat.”

“Check upstream for riders to be sure,” Tunstall ordered. “Give it a mile.”

“Some of us think I can walk to the Realms of the Gods and back,” I grumbled. “What will you be doing?”

Tunstall took another drink from his flask, then emptied it onto the ground and walked over to the river, upstream from the mess. Stooping with a soft grunt, he dunked the flask in the water and rinsed it. “I’m going to wash the evil off of what we’ve retrieved, in case it just takes longer for it to eat through metal.”

I rolled my eyes, impatient with myself. “I never thought of that,” I confessed. “Don’t tell me. This is why you’re senior partner.”

He chuckled softly as he stood, the flask now full of water. “You think of plenty of other things, Cooper. Now,
maji
!”

I gave him my shoddy imitation of Achoo’s soft bark, watching as he returned to the pile of metal we’d made. Using his half branch, he spread the pieces apart. I saw from his movements that he was in pain, two gulps of mead or no. Usually he rides and leads the horse I ride when I’m not running with Achoo. Tonight we had tried his body too far. That’s why I hadn’t whined when he ordered me to run up the river. When I do complain, he mentions me getting a younger partner, and I don’t like that at all. It’s my fault we’re out running all over the countryside, mine and Achoo’s. Without us he’d be walking through the Lower City, a life that would be easier on his legs.

“Achoo,
kemari
,” I ordered her. She came to me, her tail between her legs, whining her objections. She wanted to find her quarry, but once more he had vanished over water.
“Bau,”
I said, offering the prince’s loincloth for her to smell. She looked at me with reproach, as if she said, “I
know
the smell, I just want to
find
him!”

“Maji,”
I said, pointing upstream.

She whined at me again. She didn’t want to go beside the water, she complained, or so I believed. I knew she also wondered why we didn’t have a way to go
on
the water.

“Pox and murrain, Achoo, I’m too tired to fuss over it.
Maji
, right now!” I ordered.

Supposedly we should only use our hound’s name and the words of the exact order, but Achoo and I understood each other far better than the scent-hound handlers’ stiff-necked rules took into consideration. Just then, she knew I was a fingertip away from shouting, something neither of us liked. Sullen, head and tail down, Achoo circled the ugly soup and headed upstream. I scooped up my stone lamp and followed her.

We actually went over a mile to see if there was a ferry or anyone who might have seen a strange boat. We found no witnesses nearby, though I knew they could have been there earlier. I was relieved to see there were no ferries as far as we ran. Achoo and I returned to Tunstall, our eagerness and worry over having found the mess completely worn off. My neck was stiff and sore from staring at the ground, but I knew I would have to do a search of the riverbank downstream as well as up. I was sorry I hadn’t had a drink of that mead before Tunstall dumped it out.

We found him weaving a rough basket out of willow withes. “To carry our gleanings,” he explained. Apparently he’d forgotten he had named Master Farmer unmanly for doing embroidery. Beside Tunstall the metal pile, rinsed clean, gleamed in the light of his stone lamp. When I told him I would take the downriver search as well, he nodded. Achoo drank from the water above the black patch that was the mess while I took a quick rest with Tunstall by the trees.

“You’ll need to do more than check downriver, Cooper,” he told me wearily. “We need a mage to look at the evil, and my lord has to be told sooner before later. My legs are giving me Chaos. I would have sworn the night would be clear, but my bones grieve me like it means to rain.”

“Let me have a look,” I said. He turned over on his belly. We’d done this before, ever since both of his legs were broken in a market brawl. Kora, who knows sommat of healing even though it’s not through her Gift, taught me magicless things to help my partner. Tunstall and I both knew that if he’d gone to the Dogs’ healers and they understood how much his old wounds troubled him, they’d put him to soft work, not the tough Rat-catching he loves.

First I felt his calf and thigh muscles. They were as hard as stone. I leaned into the muscles with my knuckled fists, like Kora had shown me, working from the narrow part up into the big. I put my whole back behind it, twisting my fists into the knots I could feel. When they started to loosen up, I switched to the heels of my palms and long, looser strokes up through the muscles. I knew it had to hurt like sharp razors, but except for a grunt or two, Tunstall hardly let on.

Such pains are the price of years of Dog work. I’m starting to collect a few of my own, in the arm bone that was broke when a horse threw me two years back and again last year, in the fingers I broke while stupidly punching a Rat in the jaw.

“Tell my lord we need more folk to search these woods for aught we’ve missed,” Tunstall said when I was nearly done. “Hunters will be good, surely. He needs the warriors to protect Their Majesties. If those mages did bring the ships up, they’ll have to be searched, too. That’s you and me—none of these nobles or their servants will know what to look for or how to look for it. Mage Farmer, too, mayhap, if he knows how to do a sarden search.”

“Yes, indeed, but not tonight,” I told him, getting to my feet. “And Achoo stays here with you.”

“She needs to sniff the riverbank,” Tunstall said. “We’ll feel like right loobies if it turns out later they swam the river on horseback, or came back on land after they broke this trail we’ve been following.”

“I hate it when you’re right,” I said. “Achoo,
tumit.
”

Achoo began to smell around us, but her heart was not in it. She had plainly given up on finding the scent in this place. We went to the riverbank and followed it south.

For two miles or so there was naught of use. I would have to ask where boats docked at night, if they docked, and where the trading caravans that followed the road stopped to rest. I suspected no one was allowed to spend the night anywhere near the Summer Palace, but I had to be sure. In the meantime, Achoo and I had ourselves a quiet, boring, disappointing walk. Achoo hates searching places where there’s not so much as a hint of the scent that she’s after. She droops from top to toe. Once I was certain we’d covered the two miles, we swung back toward the main road, bordered here by the wall of the Summer Palace. We hadn’t gone more than a mile before I heard riders approach. Achoo and I went into the trees, not knowing who was out so late.