Antrax (30 page)

Every time she thought of the witch, she was consumed by a white-hot anger. It wasn’t the damage to the ship or the imprisonment of the Rovers that fueled it. It wasn’t even the unavoidable loss of contact with Walker’s company. It was the death of Furl Hawken for which she most blamed the witch, because if not for the witch’s seizure of the
Jerle Shannara
and her imprisonment of the Rover crew, it would never have happened.

Somehow, someway, she had promised herself, the Ilse Witch would be made to pay for Hawk’s death. It was something she had vowed while she lay belowdecks, still too weak even to sit up, unable to stop thinking about what she had witnessed. There would be a reckoning for Hawk, and Little Red wanted to be the one to bring it about.

The day was dragging on toward midafternoon, the sky a mass of thick gray clouds, the sun screened away, the air raw with cold. At least they were sufficiently sheltered by the landfall to be protected from the bitter wind and sleet blowing with such ferocity along the coast. She marveled at the oddness of the weather there, so different on the coast than inland, so unexplainably in contrast. Only Shrikes and gulls and the like could make homes in the cliffs
of the coastal waters. Humans could never live here in any comfort. She wondered if humans lived inland. She wondered if there were humans anywhere at all.

“Afternoon,” a voice growled, snapping her out of her reverie.

She turned to find Hunter Predd standing a few feet away, his wiry frame wrapped in a heavy cloak, his weathered features ruddy and bemused. She smiled ruefully. “Sorry. I was somewhere else. Good afternoon to you.”

He moved a step closer, looking out toward the ocean. “There’s a big storm coming on, a bad one. Saw it building out there while flying in with the last of the hemp and reed. It might lock us down for a few days.”

“We’re locked down anyway until the ship can fly again. What’s it looking like now, two or three more days at least before we can get under way again?”

“At least.”

“Are you foraging for materials still?”

He shook his head and ran one gnarled hand through his windblown hair. “No, we’re done. It’s up to Black Beard and the others to make it all work now.”

She gestured him over. “Sit down. Talk with me. I’m sick of talking with myself.”

She made room for him on the bench, swinging her legs off and placing her feet carefully on the decking. She winced in spite of herself at the pain the effort brought on.

The sharp eyes darted toward her. “Still a little tender, I guess.”

“Do all Wing Riders possess such acute powers of observation?”

He chuckled softly. “Feelings seem a little tender, too.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment, looking down at her legs, her boots, the decking. Time passed. She felt a great void in her heart, a place opening up where opportunity slipped away while she sat doing nothing.

She lifted her eyes to meet his. “How long has it been since we
left them? More than a week anyway, isn’t it? Too long, Wing Rider. Way too long.”

He nodded, his brow furrowing. He started to say something, then stopped, as if deciding that anything he had to say was unnecessary. He clasped his hands about one knee and rocked back slightly in his cloak, grizzled head shaking.

“You can’t favor this delay any more than I do,” she said. “You must want to do something about it, too.”

He nodded. “I’ve been considering it.”

“If we could just find out if they are all right, if they would be safe enough until the ship could reach them …”

She didn’t finish, waiting on him to do so for her. He looked off into the distance instead, as if trying to spy them through the mist and cold. Then he nodded once more. “I could take a look for them. I could leave now, in fact. Should leave now, because once the storm comes in, it won’t be so easy to fly out.”

She leaned forward eagerly, red hair fanning out about her shoulders. “I have the coordinates Big Red mapped out from our journey in. We won’t have any trouble following them back.”

He looked at her in surprise. “We?”

“I’m going with you.”

He shook his head. “Your brother won’t let you go and you know it. He’ll put a stop to it before you finish telling him what you intend.”

She gave it a moment, then reached up with one finger and touched her temple. “Think about what you just said, Hunter Predd,” she advised softly. “When was the last time my brother told me what to do, would you guess?”

He smiled in rueful understanding. “Well, he won’t like it, anyway.”

She smiled back. “It won’t be the first time he’s had to deal with this sort of disappointment. Nor the last, I’d wager.”

“You and me?” he asked, arching one eyebrow.

“You and me.”

“I won’t ask if you’re up to it.”

“Best not.”

“I won’t ask what you intend once we get there either, even though I’d be willing to bet it goes beyond a quick flyover.”

She nodded without answering.

He sighed deeply. “It will feel good to be back in the air, good to be doing what we were trained to do, Obsidian and me.” He rubbed his callused hands together. “We’ll leave Po Kelles and Niciannon to run whatever errands your brother and the others need until they catch up to us. Maybe our leaving will inspire them to work faster on the repairs.”

“Maybe. My brother hates to miss out on anything. Going inland for a look around was his idea in the first place.”

“And now you’ve stolen it.” He shook his head, smiled ruefully. “How soon can you be ready?”

She rose gingerly and unwrapped herself from the blanket. Underneath, throwing knives were strapped in place about her waist.

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “How soon can you saddle your bird?”

T
hey flew west off the coast and inland aboard Obsidian, settled comfortably upon the riding harness strapped to the Roc’s feathered back, Hunter Predd at the reins and Rue Meridian seated just behind him. The Rover wore her flying leathers, black like her brother’s and molded to her body from constant use. Beneath, her wounds were carefully bound and padded, and the leathers served as light armor to protect them from the rougher abuses she might suffer on her journey. For weapons, she bore a brace of throwing knives about her waist, another tucked into her boot, a long knife strapped to her good thigh, and bow and arrows slung across her back. A great cloak and hood wrapped her against the cold and wind, but even so she found herself ducking her chin and hunching her shoulders to stay warm.

That her brother was angry at her decision to make this journey was the understatement of the year. He was so furious, so stunned by what he considered her obvious stupidity and immeasurably poor judgment, that he ended up shouting at her loud enough to bring work on the airship to a halt until he was finished. No one else said a word, not even Spanner Frew. No one else
wanted any part of the argument. Big Red was speaking for them all—loudly enough for all of their voices combined, come to that—and there was nothing further to be said or done. She listened patiently for a few minutes, then began shouting back at him, and eventually threw up her hands and limped away, screaming back one final time to suggest that if he was so worried about her, maybe he’d better hurry along his repair efforts and follow.

It wasn’t fair to chide him so, but she was beyond caring about what was fair and reasonable. What she cared about—the only thing she cared about by then—was that sixteen men and women were trapped inland in strange and dangerous territory with no realistic hope of finding their way out and a madwoman and her reptilian servants hunting for them. She had no idea what might have happened to them, but she didn’t like to think about the possibilities. She wanted reassurance that her worst fears had not been realized. She wanted evidence of their safety. Time was an enemy, swift and elusive. There was risk in what she was doing, but it was a risk worth taking when measured against the consequences of further inaction. Hunter Predd said nothing during the argument or afterwards, but she knew he agreed with her decision. Wing Riders were made cautious by training and from experience, but they knew when it was time to act.

It was late afternoon when they departed, and they flew until the night enveloped them. The blue-gray line of the ocean and clouds was left behind, along with the freezing cold of the coastal air. The inland darkness was warm and soft, a welcome change. The land stretched away before them, an unbroken rippling of green treetops and dark ridgelines dotted with lakes and laced with rivers, hemmed away behind the coastal cliffs and mountain peaks. Far distant, caught in a patch of fading sunlight, an ice field’s glimmer was hard and bright against the enfolding dark.

Hunter Predd turned Obsidian downward to find a campsite. After several minutes of searching, they landed in a clearing atop a
broad wooded rise that gave Obsidian several choices of perch and routes of escape and his riders a good view of the surrounding countryside. It wasn’t that they expected trouble, just that they knew enough to be ready for it. It was a country about which they knew virtually nothing. There could be things there that would kill, things that they had never encountered before. Even if they avoided whatever it was that warded Castledown, there would be other dangers.

While Hunter Predd unsaddled Obsidian, groomed his feathers, and watered and fed him, Rue Meridian set about preparing their meal. They had agreed to forgo a fire, to avoid attracting unwanted attention, so she settled for cold cheese, bread, and dried fruit from the stores she had brought from the ship. When Hunter Predd joined her, she brought out an aleskin and shared it with him between bites. They ate their meal in silence, watching the darkness deepen and the stars appear. Light from the full moon rising in the north was brilliant and cleansing, and the land took on a fresh white cast amid the shadows. Atop the rise, the woods were silent. Within the trees, nothing moved.

“How long will it take us to get to where we’re going?” the Wing Rider asked when they were finished eating. He sipped from the aleskin and handed it over to her. “Your best guess will do. I just need some idea of how to pace my bird.”

She drank, as well, and put the container down. “I think we can get there by late tomorrow if we leave at sunrise and push through the day. It took longer coming out, but we were feeling our way and nursing our wounds, so it went more slowly. We’d lost half our power and much of our steering. Your Roc will fly faster than we did.”

“Then we take a look around and see who’s there?”

She shrugged. “When I was a girl and we played hide-and-seek, I learned that the best way to find someone was not to look too hard. I learned that instincts are necessary, that you have to
trust them. We can have a look at the bay where the
Jerle Shannara
put Walker and the others ashore. We can fly inland until we sight Castledown. But I don’t think we can be certain that what we’re looking for is at either place.”

“Or even aboveground.”

She gave him a sharp look.

“What I mean is that the Druid told us the safehold was belowground. That’s all.”

She nodded. “We’ll have to look sharp, in any case, to find them. They won’t just be standing around waiting.”

“We’ll have Obsidian to help with that.” The Wing Rider gestured to where the bird roosted in the dark on a broad outcropping of rocks. “That’s what he’s been trained to do, to look for things we can’t see, to hunt for what’s lost and needs finding. He’s good at it. Better than you and me.”

She eased her injured leg into a new position. It ached from being locked about the Roc during their flight, even for only the two hours they had traveled. How much worse would it be by tomorrow night? She sighed wearily as she rubbed it back to life, careful to avoid the knife wound. It was no worse, she supposed, than she had imagined it would be. She’d already checked the bandage, and there was no evidence of bleeding. The stitches were holding her together so far.

“We’ll rest pretty regularly tomorrow,” Hunter Predd declared, watching her. Her eyes lifted in sharp reproof. “Not just for you,” he added. “For the bird, too. Obsidian travels better with frequent stops.”

“As long as you’re not doing me any special favors.”

His laugh was dry and mirthless. “We wouldn’t want that, would we?”

She passed him the aleskin and leaned back on her elbows. “You can laugh all you want. You didn’t grow up a girl among men
the way I did. If you asked for special favors from my brother or my cousins, they laughed at you. Worse, they made things so difficult you wished you’d never opened your mouth. Rover women have a tradition of endurance and toughness born out of constant travel, responsibility for family, and a mostly hard life. In the old days, we had no cities, no place in the world outside of our wagons and our camps. We were nomads, adrift much of the time, at sea or in flight the rest. No one helped us just because they wanted to. We taught them to depend on us, on our skills and our goods, so they had no choice. We have always been a self-sufficient people, even now, as sailors and shipbuilders and mercenaries, and whatever else we can do better than others—”