The Execution (15 page)

He thought briefly to himself that his
jaw had taken a terrible beating today, and he gently manipulated
it to make certain it was not broken. It was about then that his
thoughts returned to the walk he and Julianne had shared on her way
home, and he grinned outright.

Spitting blood from his mouth, he
tested the looseness of a tooth with one finger. Exhausted, beaten
and ragged, he turned and started back. He was a long way from home
and without a horse, but his heart soared and his footsteps were
light.

He hurt all over, but D’ata was in
love. He’d never felt this way before, and life was
wonderful.

CHAPTER TEN

†

It wasn’t long before the hounds had
the scent of Ravan's trail. The purpose for their breeding
manifested itself superbly as they hunted. They ran for one reason
only, to kill the boy. Their drool laced the new snow as they slung
their wet noses back and forth across the frosty brush, snapping at
each other in their excitement. If unchecked, they would hamstring
their prey. If further unchecked, they would gut it
alive.

Ravan knew his legs were no match for
the dogs. He knew it was only a matter of time. If he was to
survive, he must stay alert and use all of his resources, mental
and physical. To live, he knew he must call upon everything he’d
learned when he was the hunter, not the hunted.

He tied the flour sack of supplies so
that it rested comfortably across his hips, not flopping about or
throwing him off balance. In short order, he established a
satisfactory pace, matching his breath to his efforts with a mental
cadence he knew he could sustain. He conserved precious energy
whenever he could. Inhale—two steps, exhale—two steps. The simple
counting to himself kept him focused and calm as he jogged on. He
knew it would mean disaster if he allowed himself to sweat from
fear rather than exertion.

He had seen men use dogs before, to
fatigue their prey and ultimately lame them. Sometimes, the hunter
was too slow regaining control of the hounds, and the beasts would
kill the prey, tearing them to shreds. It was gruesomely efficient
and terrible poor sport. Ravan considered it the lazy man’s hunt
and snorted in derision. Why his enemy had chosen to turn the dogs
on him was a mystery, for they would gain nothing if they killed
him—if what the Innkeeper’s wife said to him was true.

Ravan did not see himself as she had
described him, as a commodity to be exploited. It was beyond the
boy’s comprehension to see profit in himself. After all, he was an
orphan, one of the unwanted ones.

Hadn’t LaFoote said he ‘belonged’ to
someone, to this person, Duval?

And yet Ravan could not fathom what a
group of men, bad men, could possibly want with him? He worried,
having heard of terrible things that girls and boys were sometimes
forced to do. He thought briefly of his sisters and it discouraged
him to consider what their fates had likely been. No matter—that
seemed so long ago, there was no point in thinking about it
now.

He swiftly categorized these thoughts
as counterproductive, pushed them from his mind, and ran
on.

The dogs were the danger. Without
them, Ravan knew he could outmaneuver and outrun the men, even if
they had horses. Perhaps they knew this and were willing to risk
his death to the hounds against not catching him at all. He tried
to think fast because the situation was not just complicated, it
was eminent. He recognized that he had precious little time and
must keep his wits about himself.

At first, he tried to put distance
between himself and Duval. He was able to easily accomplish this,
as his young and light body was extremely conditioned to just such
a task. He normally ran many miles, nearly every day. Frequently
he’d run his prey down on his longer hunts in the woods, and he was
fit beyond compare.

However, never before had Ravan been
desperate, and despite his efforts, he broke out into the cold
sweat of fear. He wondered if this was how the beasts felt as he
had hunted them.

The telltale first sign of fatigue
greeted him. His chest began to ache, collateral damage from
sucking the frigid air as he plunged through the forest. He needed
oxygen, but the price was damage to the delicate lung tissue.
Tonight was a perilous cold. Winter had abruptly arrived, and the
snow was crystalline on top of the hoar frost, making the pine
floor of the woods slippery and treacherous. As the overcast night
slowly cleared, and stars blinked to life, the temperature
continued to fall. The chase was going to drain him rapidly—this he
knew. He wished he’d eaten before he'd gone upstairs to do the
candlesticks.

In a peculiar way, he marveled at the
desperation he’d never experienced before, knew now that his prey
had felt just this way so many times when he’d hunted. This gave
him a small sense of peace. He was in good company, becoming like
one of the wild ones he'd spent so much time walking
amongst.

Plunging onward, he made his way
towards the spring. Time passed in what seemed like only seconds.
All the while, he listened for the bay of the hounds behind
him.

Ravan was normally as fit as the
wilder kind he hunted, but he'd been running for nearly two hours.
The cold sucked the energy from him, exhausting his strength and
dimming his thoughts. Despite his efforts, his hands, and then his
feet threatened numbness. He knew this routine, recognized the
stages—he'd seen it many times.

'I must focus,' he told himself and
concentrated on his breathing, recreating the cadence that matched
his stride. He snatched handfuls of the fine, powdery snow from the
underbrush as he ran, knowing that if the thirst set in, his back
would ache and he would no longer be able to carry the
pace.

He finally reached the bank of the
stream and glanced only for a brief second up and down the brook,
knowing already what he needed to do. It was shallow enough,
perhaps one to two feet deep and only about twenty feet wide, but
steep and swift. He paused, could barely make out the tiny white
caps on the surface of the stream. They seemed to mock him,
dissuade him, but he didn’t hesitate. Plunging into the water, he
gasped, a thousand icy needles invading his pores. The chill of the
stream seemed to laugh at him as it lapped up against his thighs.
It was like being boiled alive—in ice. He struggled to wade up the
tiny river, but the going was very slow and treacherous.

His breath caught in his throat. The
pain was excruciating. If he could only withstand the cold for a
bit longer, before his legs went numb. If they failed him, taking
him into the stream, the result would be disastrous. For the first
time in his life, the forest did not seem like Ravan’s
friend.

It was up the stream that he must go,
and downwind from his predators. He knew this, and if he could make
it, it would take a good while for them to figure out the trick and
for the dogs to pick up his trail. They would logically assume he'd
taken the downstream, easier route. Furthermore, Ravan planned to
exit the stream on the same side where he'd gone in, while his
pursuers would anticipate he would cross to the other
side.

Fighting against the swiftness of the
current, his muscles cramped painfully from the freeze. Several
times, he lost his footing on the smooth rocks and almost fell,
plunging his arms into the icy current. Desperately, he grasped at
stones to keep himself upright. His fingers turned quickly numb.
Eventually, he climbed back out off the stream, tried to control
his breathing—and listened. Tears stung his eyes from the pain, and
he couldn’t feel his feet, but he held his sobs silently at
bay.

Downstream, just as he anticipated, he
heard the hunters and dogs grow more distant. It played out just as
he’d hoped it would. They'd gone with the current. It was human
nature to follow the easier route, and humans were, well—not always
very clever and sometimes very predictable. Just as he anticipated,
they searched the opposite side of the river for his exit. It would
be some time before they would abandon this search and conclude
that he'd never crossed, deciding that he’d fallen into the river.
Then they would search for his body, and it would be even longer
before they reasoned that he’d exited the stream on the same
side.

When Ravan was certain the dogs and
hunters were on the other side of the stream and moving away, he
steeled himself for his next move—he must return to the water. This
would be the most excruciating part. Already chilled from his
previous exposure, he must struggle back down the current to the
same spot where he initially entered the stream. Then he could
quietly backtrack along his own trail, back towards the Inn. It
would be difficult, though not impossible for the hounds to
determine there was a new scent on top of the old trail.

Slipping back into the water, he cried
out softly as the agony of it lapped, once more, against his
thighs. He tried desperately in the blackness to feel for solid
footing, hoping beyond hope he would not fall. He could not feel
his feet but was aware of the dull thuds as his ankles and legs
banged against the rocks. He was so numb, he worried that he would
not feel an injury, possibly an ankle pinned between the
stones.

Finally, he reemerged from the stream,
uncomfortably unsteady on his numbed feet. He clutched at the thorn
brush to pull himself from the water and scrambled back up the
bank, setting off to backtrack.

This would give him a substantial time
advantage and he knew he must make quick work of it. He would run a
quarter of a mile or so, then he would stop and climb a tree. By
crawling from branch to branch, he could clear a good ten feet or
so in the air, angling off the trail. Then, he would drop down from
the tree and set off in a new direction—and set the first trap. By
the time Duval and his men figured out he'd gone back, as they lost
and found the scent once more, he would again have a jump on them.
He could then set at least one trap, if all went as
planned.

* * *

The fury on the face of the dog
handler was nothing compared to the satisfaction on the face of
Duval. He was amused, almost pleased.

It was brilliant, all the backtracking
the boy had accomplished, and how he had scaled so far from the
trail. Duval pondered the child he'd paid so dearly for. He was a
gambler at heart and usually a savvy one at that. He was thrilled
at the indications before him, that his prize was worth it.
Impatient by nature, Duval was also excited to own his prize, so he
pushed his men even harder.

He'd seen what a mere boy had done to
Pierre Steele and the fat bastard deserved it. What a pleasurable
indulgence it was going to be to break Ravan and remold him into
the killer he was destined to become. More importantly, it would be
profitable. He pondered this, rubbing his chin with the back of his
hand, smiling darkly as he stared down at the dog.

The hound was stabbed through, spitted
on a black thorn branch. The impact was extreme, the spear roughly
hewn but beveled in such a way as to be extremely deadly. It was
sudden and efficient, and the dog had suffered only briefly having
taken the harpoon to the chest.

In all actuality, loss of the dog
slowed the hunting party only a bit, but the boy now maintained a
good hour and a half lead on them because of his antics at the
stream. Duval marveled at this. Ravan’s strategy was brilliant. He
stooped to observe the rudimentary, but deadly, detail of the trap
and decided he would not underestimate this one again.

By now, it was quite dark, as only the
hours after midnight can be. Even with torches, the going was slow.
His mercenaries, fit as they were, struggled to keep the horrible
pace that Ravan set. For the first time tonight, Duval thought he
might lose his prize.

Then, they found the second
trap...

The man gasped and plunged to the
ground, his leg nonfunctional, the tendon cut clean through. The
retraction of the muscle caused much greater pain than the actual
injury itself. The dog handler would be lame for life. He screamed
in agony and rage, perhaps anticipating the life of a cripple and
knowing Duval would not hesitate to cut him loose from his
ranks.

Duval approached the scene, looked
down at his man, and calculated his losses. The mercenary was now a
liability. Duval did not deal in liabilities. He made a decision
and before the wounded man could object, he drew his sword.
Suddenly and efficiently, he separated the man’s throat,
meticulously drawing his blade across both arteries, leaving him to
quietly bleed out in the dark. Duval’s mood blackened profoundly as
he wiped the blade on the man’s tunic and tallied his
losses.

Time was stretching on and Duval was
no longer amused. His temper was running critically short and he
berated his men. They were the experts, weren't they? All of
them—hunters, killers and mercenaries, but tonight they were fools!
They had taken on armies, crushed warlords. Could they not even
catch a boy?

He cursed them, threatened them, lest
his prize escape. His men would satisfy him or become victim to his
rage!

The night wore dismally on.

* * *