Ravenwild: Book 01 - Ravenwild (39 page)

Orie continued to study the map. “Okay,” he said. “This is it. Final word. You guys ride west. Anywhere. Don’t get caught. Eat bugs. Eat berries. Eat frogs if you have to. Eat whatever you can. Make sure you fill your waterskins and water the horses every chance you get. They can graze for their food. I’m going to go back and get Forrester. They’ll
never
expect it. I have to try.”

As an afterthought, he added. “Take Thunder with you. If they’re tracking you, and they will, they’ll think I’m with you.”

“How will you find us?” asked Gracie.

“The dots,” he said.

He folded up a few of the maps and shoved them in his pack. “Don’t worry, we’ll find you. Go now.”

Gracie and Ryan exchanged meaningful looks.

“Go,” he repeated. “Get out of here. Keep your wits about you. I don’t want to have to be rescuing you too.”

They all exchanged a brief hug, and Gracie and Ryan moved off deeper into the forest gloom.

Orie watched them go and swallowed hard. “I must be nuts,” he thought to himself.

Even so, he knew he had to do it. If not to honor the Troll, who had not only befriended them but had also saved their lives, he knew that without Forrester they probably had no chance of rescuing his sister. So, with the same determination with which he donned his football helmet to take the field and lead his team, he started off, making his way slowly along the riverbank and hugging the cover of the growth along its bank. He didn’t hurry, but spent a lot of time sweeping behind him with branches he picked up along the way to cover his tracks. He spied a dense tangle of vines and cut off several lengths, jamming them into his pack.

The sun was high in the midmorning sky when he collapsed from exhaustion and slept.

He awoke as the sun was setting, the sky colored in dazzling pink and violaceous swirls. He was disoriented at first, but quickly came to his senses, painfully remembering the task at hand.

He snuck down to the river’s edge and drank his fill. There were some berries growing wild among the bulrushes, and he tried a few. They were sweet, and while they did not satisfy the enormous hunger that burned in his belly, they took it away enough for him to concentrate on what he had to do. He got out his maps and saw that Gracie and Ryan had made their way several miles to the west. “Good,” he thought. He also noticed that the dot that they had all assumed represented Forrester had moved as well, clearly headed in the direction of Ghasten, and was closer to him than it had been in the morning.

Once again he thought, “Good. He must be alive.” They wouldn’t be transporting him if he were dead.

He continued along, sweeping as he went. In an hour, having noticed that he suffered no ill effects from the berries, he ate as many as he could. They gave him a lot of energy, so when he ran into a big patch he spent a while filling his pack with as many as he could. He walked all night, always conscious that the most important things were silence and leaving no trail. So far, so good. Just as the sun was peeking its head over the trees on the far side of the river, he checked the maps one last time. Gracie and Ryan were farther to the west, but Forrester’s dot was where it had been the last time he had checked. He crawled into a thick tangle of growth and slept.

He was awakened this time in the mid-afternoon by the sound of voices. They were close! His heart pounded in his chest. Not risking even a cautious glance, he tried to make out where the voices were coming from and what was being said. While he did, he concentrated on keeping his breathing under control, remembering what Forrester had said about the Gnomes’ keen sense of hearing.

Within minutes, those speaking were within a few feet of him. Slowly, he checked his sword to be sure it was free in its scabbard, and was about to jump up and try and fight his way out of this impossible mess, when he heard footsteps running through the woods further inland.

“Captain,” he heard a Gnome shout. “We have found the trail. My lieutenant ordered me to get word to you at once. The three of them are riding west. They are riding hard. We will have to move fast to catch them.”

“You two,” the captain ordered. “Get word to the others and have them transport the prisoner directly to the castle. Malance will have a good time with that one. Everybody else, come with me!”

The soldiers, not six feet from him, ran quickly to join the rest of the outfit, and in a few minutes he was alone.

He waited a good long time and cautiously lifted his head. Nothing. Sighing deeply, he sat up and rubbed all of his muscles to soothe the hard aching from having lain so still for so long. He could smell smoke, and when he snuck to its source he found their temporary camp had indeed been hastily abandoned.

Likewise, they had left a half-cooked animal that looked like some sort of goat roasting on a metal spit over the coals, as well as a small metal boiling pot with what looked like tea leaves laid out neatly on a flat rock. He tore off a piece of the meat and wolfed it down, then quickly butchered the remains of the carcass and repacked his few things. Discarding the vines, he instead placed a generous quantity of leaves between the meat and the maps to avoid soiling them.

In a few hours he had made his way another mile up river. The maps indicated that he was still on the same side as his large friend. If he could only keep going in the direction he was going there was a good chance he might intercept them. He was exhausted, but doggedly continued on, knowing that he had to make better time than they, or all was lost.

He found himself thinking back to football camp in August, the grueling drills done in the miserable Connecticut summer heat, the emphasis on toughness, on loyalty. He kept moving.

At sunset he stopped to eat some of the meat he had stumbled upon, to drink, and to check the maps.

“Hmmm,” he thought. From the location of Forrester’s dot, it looked as though if he continued on his present course, he would definitely cut them off, if he could keep up the pace for just one more night. The maps indicated that there was a bridge over the river a few miles ahead, and if he could get to them before they crossed over it, while he had the cover of the woods, there was a chance. They would still be well away from Ghasten.

He knew if they made it to the castle, his chances of rescuing Forrester went from slim to none.

So with steely resolve he forged forward, putting one foot in front of the other.

He was no less exhausted.

He was no less afraid.

But he found that, while no less shaky, his feet kept moving, and that he never forgot, not once, to carefully sweep his trail clean to cover his tracks every few steps. And that he never forgot to keep “woods quiet” so as to not give away his position to the enemy that he knew was out there hunting him. And that there was an abundance of berries upon which to munch as he kept going on this trying slog along the river bank. And that he had meat in his pack, which, however awful it tasted in his mouth, sustained him.

Suddenly he found a quiet confidence that he could somehow succeed in this as he walked through the shadows of this valley of death.

When he finally collapsed in the tangle and wrap of the shoreline scrub, having walked all night, his final thought was: “Hang on Jacqueline, I’m coming.”

He was so beaten down that he slept until a short while before sundown, which he knew right away by the position of the sun in the Slovan sky. He suddenly realized that he had forgotten to check his maps before crashing, battered and scratched, which he did before he stood to relieve himself.

He saw that Gracie and Ryan were now farther to the west by several miles, that his mother and father were slightly farther to the east, still in the northern Ravenwild forest, that Stephanie was approaching the borderlands of Slova and Ravenwild far to the north, and that Jacqueline was pretty much in the same place in the Agden Woods.

He also noticed that Forrester’s dot was missing!

“Great,” he thought. “He’s dead.”

It had all been for naught. A vision of his enormous friend, covered in Gnomes, hacking and slashing at him on the edge of the flat of the Vargus Woods, flashed into his mind. “Why did this have to happen,” he found himself thinking. “All he did was to try and help us, and guide us, and, and be our friend. Why did I have to get separated from Ryan and Grace? They’re city slickers. They won’t stand a chance in the woods against the Gnomes.”

So now, pressed down by this massive weight of dejection, like the weight of the bench press that crushes against the athlete in the weight room when he is training, he curled up in anguish.

He found himself muttering, cursing under his breath.

Then, out from beyond the boundaries of his despair, he heard a familiar rumble. “You shouldn’t be making all of that noise. The Gnomes will hear you from a mile away.”

He jumped up and into the arms of Forrester, hugging him ferociously.

“Forrester!” he cried, “You’re alive!”

Forrester hugged him back, saying, “So it would seem. But hey, keep your voice down. There are unfriendlies about.”

He set his young friend back onto the forest floor and said, “But not to worry. I have sent our would-be friends on a little wild goose-chase, so we are most likely quite alone. But it never hurts to be cautious.”

Chapter 15

“Human, wake up. Hey, Human, wake up.”

Blake heard the voice, from what seemed like across a great valley, pleading with him. He fought to regain awareness, but as he did he deliberately maintained the semblance of unconsciousness. He didn’t know why, because he couldn’t remember how it was that he had descended into oblivion. Who was it? He tried to think. His head pounded terribly. Deep within his cranium, waves of pain ran wild with every beat of his heart. For a moment he thought he had been captured by a rebel in one of the Afghanistan drug-lord’s armies, but then it flashed on him, and he remembered. He had been hit in the head with something and had passed out. He was in a place called Ravenwild, and he and Jessica were … that’s right, trying to rescue Stephanie who was being held in … No, they were trying to get to Mount Gothic …

His thoughts were jumbled and came slowly. He felt bile rise in his throat and fought to suppress it, but found himself gagging on it anyway.

Then he remembered that he had awakened some time during the night and actually spoken to one of his captors. He remembered asking him to please loosen the bonds around his wrists because he couldn’t feel his hands. That’s right, he remembered, as the fog lifted from his brain. Jessica had been captured by this band of Gnomes that he had followed for days, and right when he thought he might rescue her, the tide had turned and now they were both in captivity.

He tried to open his eyes a little to assess the situation, but shut them again when he heard other voices approaching.

He heard them stop directly in front of him.

One of them seized him by the hair and roughly turned his head side to side.

“The left side. I hit him on the left side. There, see it? Wake him up.”

“You
wake him up, Oddwaddle. You’re the one who knocked him out.”

“I’m a good shot, what can I tell you?” said Oddwaddle. “Hey, Human, wake up.” He slapped him hard. “Come on now, wake up.” He slapped him again.

“That’s enough of that,” Jessica demanded in a loud voice. “There’s no need for that, now. Take me out of these bindings, and I’ll wake him up. You’re not afraid of me, are you? Three of you, one of me? You with weapons, which you are plainly good at using, me with none?”

“Hey, I know,” said Veinn. “Let’s torture the lady Human. He was awake last night, maybe he’s awake now and faking.”

“Good idea,” said Biliar. “What shall we do to her?”

“Well, as long as it doesn’t affect her ability to walk, and it doesn’t bruise the meat, I guess we can do anything we want,” said Veinn.

“She won’t need her eyelids,” said Biliar.

“Of course she’ll need her eyelids,” said Oddwaddle. “If we remove her eyelids, her eyeballs will dry out, and she will be blind. Do you realize how much more work that will make for us to get her to where we’re going? How it will slow us down? Are you an idiot? Remove her eyelids. Yes, Captain Pilrick would
love
that suggestion.

“Besides, there’s no reason to torture anybody.”

The three argued for a while on whether or not to heap suffering on Jessica in order to ascertain whether Blake was feigning unconsciousness, when Captain Pilrick flipped open his tent flap and bellowed, “Biliar, Oddwaddle, Veinn. What are you doing? One of you bring me some water, and one of you bring me some flatbread and some sliced roast. Never mind standing there and gawking at those two. We’ve all seen Humans before. Move it now, or I’ll have Jebwickett give you a few lashes to remind you how things are supposed to work in the Gnome military chain of command!

“Gall, you stand watch over the prisoners. You’ve done more work this morning than the three of them combined. You deserve a break. Keep a close eye on them, now.” Then he wandered out behind his tent, presumably to do his business.

Biliar, Oddwaddle, and Veinn jumped to do their captain’s bidding. Gall strolled over to stand watch over the two prisoners.