Spider Wars: Book Three of the Black Bead Chronicles (11 page)

“
Wait,” Sigrid said, “I
have not told you the second message.”

Cheobawn wheeled Cloud Eye
around and looked at him expectantly.

“
Tell it, then,” she
said impatiently.

“
Sam said this.” Sigrid
closed his eyes once more. “Colonel Bohea sends a message to the
one called the Little Mother. The one stone has been delivered as you
instructed.”

Cheobawn shuddered as she
used every ounce of her control to suppress the surge of primordial
terror that was clawing its way out of her guts. What had she hoped
for? That events would drive themselves at a speed more to her own
convenience? That the politics of the ruling family and a planetary
consortium thousands of light years away would bind the stone up in
debate and solemn consideration? That infinite distances between this
place and Spider space meant she had infinite time? That the politics
of human space would have the grace to let her grow up and grow older
before it descended upon them again?

Sigrid watched her turmoil
play out behind her eyes and frowned at what he saw there. She looked
away, so that he might not guess at the terrible things she had set
in motion.

“
What have you done?” he
asked.

Did she imagine the
accusation in his voice? Cheobawn snarled silently behind her woolsey
mask. It occurred to her suddenly that of everyone involved in this
mess, she was the least culpable. The unfairness of it all was
starting to make her angry. She clung to her outrage. It was a better
companion than guilt and fear.

“
Ask the Coven,” she
snapped, kicking Cloud Eye into an easy lope and reining her back
down the slope towards Connor. “They know.”

Neither Erin nor Connor
thought it wise to leave their mounts standing still in the cold.
They were not where she had left them. She eased Cloud Eye over the
low hummock of snow that concealed the fence line and then leaned out
over her mount’s broad sides, hanging onto the saddle with one heel
hooked over the pommel and her fingers hooked around the horn. Two
sets of tracks headed west parallel with the snow-drowned fence. She
eased back into the saddle and looked around for Sigrid.

Sigrid’s mood was apparent
as his mount came over the drift fast, taking the height in great
leaps. He did not rein Star in on the downhill side but instead
sailed past Cloud Eye and her rider without a pause.

She knew she deserved his
ire but she could not help glaring at Sigrid’s retreating back.
This day was turning into a watershed point in her life; she had
managed to have harsh words with the three males in her life who
least deserved her enmity. The hard knot of emotion she had been
chewing on all day suddenly drained away.

How do you shift a
mountain of trouble?
Cheobawn said into Cloud Eye’s mind.

Very carefully?
ventured Cloud Eye.

Yes, that is true
,
she laughed.
But I was thinking the answer might be more like one
stone at a time. Let’s go shift a stone.

There are no stones in
this field,
Cloud Eye said, looking around.

There is a stone named
Sigrid
, she answered, urging her friend into motion. Cloud Eye
set off to catch up with Star. She actually had the audacity to
prance a bit.

Sigrid did not glance up
when they eased up alongside him to match Star’s pace. Instead, he
kept one eye on the tracks they followed and the other on the
mid-distance, looking for their lost companions. He ignored her
completely.

“
We are tiny things, you
and I,” she said, hoping that somewhere inside her words there
might exist an apology that Sigrid might accept. “If the tribes are
like a milk worm crawling on a thistle growing at the bottom of a
scree slope on the flanks of the Dragon Spine, then you and I are the
mites that infest the worm’s fuzz. Who are we to think that we can
change our fate if the Spine decides to shake, setting the scree
slope in motion? Our ultimate fate is to be crushed by a boulder. It
could happen tomorrow or next year or not until long after the people
of the domes have faded. So if a mite woke up one day with a madness
that causes her to jump off her worm onto a flea who happens to live
on the back of a wandering pica so that she might bite the flea,
causing the flea to bite the pica who then digs left instead of right
around one particular boulder high up in the scree slope so that when
the Spine finally shakes, as we all know it must, the pica tunnel
collapses causing the boulder to fall left instead of right making
the avalanche of rock spare the thistle and the worms who live on it.
What would the mites think of that one crazy wandering sister? That
crazy is sometimes a good thing or that the goddess works in
mysterious ways? What kind of world do you want to live in, Sigrid?
One in which you have been saved by random chance or one in which a
mite took it into her head to shift a boulder and somehow, against
all odds, managed to succeed?” Cheobawn looked at him waiting. She
had his attention. Sigrid had a pained look on his brow.

“
And do I know who the
flea and the pica represent?”

“
It is better that you do
not.”

He rode in silence, watching
the tracks in front of them.

“
I would …” he
ventured finally, “I would wish that the crazy mite would live to a
ripe old age so that she might tell the tale of her adventures to the
children for such greatness cannot go unsung forever.”

“
But what is there to
tell?” Cheobawn said, “Nothing but the tale of a ride on the back
of a flea and the prescience to guess at what it might mean. I am no
hero, Sigrid. I threw another human being off the edge of the
Escarpment knowing the odds were against his survival. That makes me
a bigger monster than Mora. One of his forty-six bloodstones managed
to fall into the right hands. That is a miracle, one that is not of
my own creation. The universe is a very strange place, full of forces
beyond our understanding and I will take no credit nor any of the
blame for its workings.”

“
Do not doubt yourself,
Little Mother,” Sigrid said, the fire of his faith burning in his
voice. “I do not.”

“
I envy you the bliss of
your ignorance,” she said, looking away. Making Sigrid her
shieldman had not been her intent. “The avalanche is rolling down
the mountain. It is too early to tell if what I did has killed us or
saved us,” she said, squinting down the fence line towards the pale
horizon. “What are those two doing?”

A
pair of riderless bennelk stood in the distance, their riders afoot,
heads bent, looking at something on the ground. Sigrid put his heels
to his mount’s side and urged Star into motion. Cloud Eye did not
need any more prompting than that. She surged forward, following
close on her sister’s tail.

Erin looked up at their
approach. She had the leads of both Kite Wing and Red Leaf in her
hand, holding them in place. Connor did not wait for them to
approach. He mounted the tall drift that had buried the hedgerow that
grew along this section of fence and stared off into the distance,
studying something. Erin caught at Star’s halter as Sigrid brought
his animal to a halt in front of her.

“
Got tracks of cattle
going over the fence. Hours old,” she said to her Alpha.

“
I don’t see anything.
They might be down in a shallow draw,” Connor yelled from atop his
vantage point.

“
How many? Can you tell?”
Sigrid asked.

“
Dozen. Probably more,”
Erin guessed. Connor strode down the snow bank and leapt with a great
bound onto Kite Wing’s shoulder, using the loops on the saddle to
pull himself the rest of the way up. Erin released Kite Wing and
concentrated on keeping Star still. Sigrid kicked his feet out of the
stirrups and then levered himself up until he had his feet planted in
the saddle. With the grace of an acrobat, he unfolded his long lanky
body and stood upright, craning his neck to study the track on the
other side of the drift. The pasture looked flat but they all knew
from experience that it was as wrinkled as an oldma’s cheek. You
could hide an entire herd of the short, red haired cattle in the
deceptively shallow gullies that veined the landscape. He shook his
head and dropped back onto the saddle.

“
I can’t see anything,”
he said, glancing up at the western sky. A sliver of the sun rested
above the horizon. The light would fade fast. He dropped back into
the saddle. “Let’s check the first couple of draws, like Connor
suggested.”

Erin stamped her feet and
pounded her free arm against her side in a vain attempt to generate
muscle warmth. “Let’s go back. I’m cold and the light is
going,” she said through chattering teeth.

“
They might be just over
the next rise,” Sigrid ventured. “I do not want to come back out
here tomorrow with a storm threatening.”

Erin sent a worried look up
towards the Spine as Sigrid bent over and extended his hand. Sigrid’s
Ear leapt up and caught it, Sigrid jerking her upward. The tall girl
threw one leg up as if she meant to mount behind Sigrid. Instead, she
planted a foot against Star’s saddle skirt and used the foothold to
thrust herself off into the air. Twisting as she flipped, landing on
the back of Red Leaf without having to use the mounting loops. It was
a neat trick. Cheobawn smiled in admiration.

Sigrid led the way, setting
Star at the tall snowbank first. The hedge proved their undoing. As
his mount clambered up the hump of frozen snow, one of Star’s
forelegs broke through the crust. Star tried to recover by shifting
her weight to her other foreleg but the brittle packsnow collapsed
further. It was only their forward momentum that saved rider and
mount from becoming mired belly deep in the sharp branches of the
hedge.. Star spread her broad hind feet upon the hard crust on the
leading edge of the hedge and leapt forward. The snowbank collapsed
under the force of her landing and continued to crumble with each
step. It was a mad scramble but bennelk and rider finally found solid
ground on the opposite side. Star’s sides were heaving and she was
bleeding from a dozen scratches and abrasions up and down her legs.
The bennelk stamped the snow out of the furry feathers around her
claws and shook the snow out of her beard, rumbling grumpily. Sigrid
patted her neck, trying to sooth her.

“
Are you alright?” Erin
called, her voice tight with worry.

Sigrid laughed ruefully.
“Looks like we need to find another way across the fence.”

“
This day is just getting
better and better,” Connor said acidly. Cheobawn glanced sharply at
her packmate, wishing him into silence. This was neither the time nor
the place for another battle of words between the two Packs.

“
I don’t like this,”
Erin said. “Let’s go home.”

“
I am already stuck on
this side. I might as well go check for cattle,” Sigrid called.
“You guys ride down the fenceline until you get to the next snow
bridge. I’ll just go check the first draw and then come right
back.” He turned Star with his knees and set her into a long-legged
lope along the beaten down trail made by the lost cattle.

“
There is a crossing back
the way we came. Let’s go in that direction,” Connor suggested.

“
There is bound to be one
ahead, closer to home,” Cheobawn said, peering in that direction.

“
It’s the gods-cursed
hedge that is the problem. It runs for half a click on this section
of the fence,” Connor said. “The next snow bank is not going to
be any more stable.”

“
Sigrid is going to come
looking for us in the other direction,” Cheobawn said as she cast a
worried look towards Ramhorn’s Alpha. She was starting to think
Connor was right. The day had become a cascade of bad decisions and
unfortunate consequences. It suddenly seemed important that Sigrid
come back.

A soft sound caught
Cheobawn’s attention. She turned her head, looking for its source.
Erin was staring wide eyed at Sigrid’s retreating back, looking
pale and sick. “No, no, no,” the Ear said.

The hairs on the back of
Cheobawn’s neck stood on end. She whipped around and screamed
Sigrid’s name as she set Cloud Eye at the fractured snow bank. Her
mount tried to follow Star but her massive weight sunk her up to her
belly in the snow-drowned hedge.

Sigrid glanced over his
shoulder, confused by her yells. Behind her, Erin started screaming
something over and over again. It sounded like
run
. Sigrid
slowed Star and turned her in a wide circle. Too late, too slow, the
ambient whispered in Cheobawn’s ear.

Cloud Eye tried to fight
free of her cold prison but lost her footing in the tangle of fence,
hedge, and snow and overbalanced. Cheobawn kicked her toes free of
the stirrups and leapt clear as the huge animal rolled out from
underneath her.