Green Rider (4 page)

"Running through this mess will only break one of your legs," she said.

She guided him upstream. A tracker wouldn't be able to find hoofprints in rushing water. If they were lucky, the rain would wash away their prints on the road. The Horse, as she decided to call him for lack of any other name, seemed to approve, or at least he did not resist.

Karigan pushed away branches hanging over the stream, receiving an extra drenching from water accumulated on each limb. They picked their way over slick moss-covered rocks and through deep mud.

A granite ledge, mottled with green lichen, large enough to hide behind, loomed out of the mist. The road couldn't be seen through the fog, but it was close enough that anyone passing by could be heard. Karigan concealed herself and the horse behind the ledge, and stood miserably in the downpour awaiting some sign.

Though only moments passed, the waiting was interminable. Karigan dismounted and, tired of the rain pounding on her head, drew up her hood. She leaned against the coarse, wet granite, berating herself for having left Selium at all.

When she left Selium, the possibility of encountering genuine danger had never occurred to her. Sure, she had wanted an adventurous life like her father's. And here it was, nothing at all like she dreamed it would be.

If something happened to her, she would be unable to clear her name in Selium. More distressing still, the people who cared about her would have no clues to her disappearance. She closed her eyes and could see her father scouring the countryside for her, calling her name, grieving… Her throat constricted, and she swallowed hard.

The Horse tensed beside her, his ears pricked forward. Voices could be heard from the road, faint at first, then clearer as they drew closer.

"No sign of any horse here."

"I don't like it. The Greenie's dead and you can't tell me the horse has the smarts to deliver the message by himself."

There was a long silence before the first voice replied. "Sarge, in my estimation, a ghost rides that horse. How do we stop a spirit rider?"

Sarge snorted. "You know I forbid that kind of talk. Don't let the captain hear it either. That's the problem with you rustic fools, you're all superstitious."

"Things was getting uncanny," the "rustic fool" answered. "These woods, the dead Greenie, and the Gray One. Ice cold, he is. It's not reg'lar."

"I don't care if it's regular or not. We follow the captain's orders and right now our orders are to find that horse and destroy the message. Understand?"

"Yes, Sergeant."

Sarge grunted. "Spirit riders. You rustics have lively imaginations. I've never heard such nonsense. Now look for tracks. Captain doesn't carry that whip as an ornament, you know. You don't want his leather licking your hide, I assure you."

So at least four searched for the message. Where were the other two if they weren't with the sergeant and his companion? Whose soldiers were they? Their accents were Sacoridian to the core, but surely the king's own militia would not be involved in trying to block a vital message from reaching him. Some of the wealthier provinces armed their own small contingents, as did major landowners. Would any of them have something to lose if the message reached King Zachary?

"Sarge! I got something. Looks like a hoofprint in the mud."

"Sharp eyes, Thursgad."

Karigan unconsciously grasped the winged horse brooch pinned to the greatcoat. It warmed at her touch. Trees shifted around her in the gently wafting mist like the shapes of armed soldiers. Branches jabbed at her like swords. Should she make a run for it? Could speed and surprise allow her and The Horse to escape? She remembered all too vividly the black-shafted arrows protruding from F'ryan Coblebay's back.

Trying to outrun the soldiers would be fatal. She would hide behind the granite ledge and flee only if she had to. If the soldiers believed the messenger horse was acting on his own, all the better. She unsheathed the saber and stood by the horse's side, ready to mount, just in case.

"I can't figure out which way the horse went," Thursgad said.

"Think like a horse. Shouldn't be too hard—they've got small brains like yours. They'd take the easiest route."

"You mean… straight down the road?"

"Whadya think I mean? Is your brain even smaller than a horse's? Yes, the road. Straight ahead. This hoofprint confirms it came this way."

"But if a spirit rider guides him—"

"Thursgad, you fool. Didn't I say none of that rustic nonsense?"

Their voices faded down the road. Karigan heaved an enormous sigh of relief and sheathed her saber. She swung herself up into the wet saddle, grimacing as cold rainwater soaked through her trousers.

Then she sat in indecision. Using the road might mean running into those who searched for her. She could cut through the woods and head east, but the woods would slow her down. She frowned. If she hadn't skipped so many geography classes, she might be able to think of some other route than the road.

The Horse whinnied sharply and danced beneath her, his hooves sucking in the mud.

"What now?"

The driving rain had changed to a penetrating drizzle. It fell away in layers like veils to reveal the approach of a mounted figure. The rider was much like one of Thursgad's spirit riders, gauzy and indistinct in the shifting fog, molded of mist, insubstantial as air. His tall white stallion faded in and out of the opaque fog.

The Horse pawed the mud and snorted, every muscle in his body taut, willing Karigan to give him his head to flee as instinct told him he must. Her arms ached with the effort of holding him in. She sat rooted, fascinated by the stranger. Then she remembered F'ryan Coblebay's final words:
Beware the shadow man
…

As the rider neared, his form solidified and sharpened. No ghost was he, and his demeanor did not suggest he was a man of the shadows. He sat erect in the saddle. He stared at her with one intense green eye, the other covered by a black patch. Rain beaded on his bald head, but he seemed unconcerned. Beneath a plain charcoal cloak he wore a gold embroidered scarlet tunic. It was the uniform of one of the provincial militia.

The man halted the stallion's fluid movements with an imperceptible twitch of the reins. Karigan watched him through her tunnellike hood. Water plunked rhythmically from the rim onto her arm.

The leather of the man's saddle creaked as he leaned forward. His eye searched her. "My men seem to believe you're some sort of spirit rider," he said in a gravelly voice roughened by a lifetime of shouting commands. "Who is beneath the hood?"

Karigan was too paralyzed by fear to speak. Why hadn't she let The Horse run when she had had the chance? She grasped the brooch again.

The man's green eye flickered. "I see from your hands that you are of the flesh. Though one Greenie is dead, another carries on the mission. If you don't wish to shed your earthly flesh like Coblebay, I suggest you hand over the message satchel you carry. And you will tell me who gave Coblebay the information."

Karigan sat frozen, holding the reins tightly, feeling as if someone clenched her in a steely grip. The Horse's neck was lathered with sweat, his eyes rolling wildly. Only her tight hold prevented him from bolting.

The cold rain soaked through to Karigan's skin and the clamminess of it made her shiver. The sodden greatcoat weighed her down and made movement an effort.

The man raised a brow and Karigan imagined the great gaping socket beneath the eyepatch widening. "My governor is most displeased by this. Someone has abused his trust, and all his plans will go to ruin if he doesn't learn the name of the traitor."

Karigan remained still.

"I see." He pulled what looked like a live snake from beneath his cloak. It was a coiled whip. "Since you do not volunteer the information, I shall have to persuade you."

Karigan panted, and loosened her hold on the reins. Whatever had held her back now eased its grip on her. The whip unraveled in the man's hands, and he cracked it expertly.

"I will have you know that the hands that wield this tool of persuasion are well-practiced. Perhaps you've heard of me. I am Immerez. Captain Immerez."

Karigan had never heard of him, though a true Green Rider might know him by reputation. Her knuckles turned white around the brooch. She swallowed hard. If only she could snap her fingers and turn invisible! The brooch pulsated with sudden heat beneath her hand.

Captain Immerez stiffened, the whip going limp in his hand and his one eye wide open. "Where…?" He bent close again, his eye darting about. "Where are you?"

Karigan's mouth dropped open. Had he gone suddenly and inexplicably blind? Yet he seemed to see clearly. He just couldn't see her. She looked at… no, looked through her arm. It was there like a faint shadow, but definitely transparent. She jabbed her arm with a finger. It was solid enough…

Whatever rendered her invisible had affected her vision as well. The deep greens of soaked moss and pines became shades of gray. Immerez's scarlet tunic darkened to a shadowy maroon. Shapes grew indistinct as if a thick cloud obscured her sight.

Immerez's eye still searched for her. He unsheathed his sword, undoubtedly attempting to test by touch.

The shackles of indecision and fear fell away. The Horse needed no prompting as she gave him his head. They bounded down the stream, and she let instinct guide him, the grayness in her eyes lacking enough contrast or depth to distinguish rocks from water.

Once they nearly fell headlong, and Karigan was thrown onto The Horse's neck. He almost fell to his knees, then scrambled for his footing, slid through mud, and picked up the pace again. They careened around boulders and between trees in a breakneck dash that would have mortified her riding instructor. All the while, Captain Immerez's high-strung stallion splashed behind them.

An eternity passed before they reached the road. Karigan could only guess how the struggle downstream had taxed The Horse, yet he flew into a flat-out gallop when they reached level ground.

Thursgad and Sarge, at least the two men whom she guessed were Thursgad and Sarge, appeared ahead, riding their own horses at a slow jog. Should she turn back? The whip whizzed past her ear. Immerez was just strides behind. But she was invisible. How could he… ? She blew past the two men ahead and got an impression of their amazed expressions.

"The horse!" they shouted.

Though she was invisible, The Horse was not. As she rode around a bend, she wished for him to be invisible, too. The Horse vanished from the pursuers' sight, leaving behind only the echo of pounding hooves.

Karigan rode on, feeling as if she were submerged beneath some gray sea, with water pressing in all around. She felt as if she fought the tide; her lungs ached for air. In the gray-ness, a gloom clung to her which she felt she would never be free of, as if she would drown in it. She was so exhausted. Exhausted and wrung out with despair in the never ending gray, gray world.

Then color shimmered like a newly created thing. A path opened up on the side of the road painted with rusty red pine needles and vibrant green hemlock, pine, and spruce trees. Tiny white bunchberry flowers grew in patches along the path. The sun broke through the clouds, and though it appeared just a lighter shade of gray elsewhere in the woods, along the path it showered through the trees in brilliant beams of gold.

Karigan reined The Horse along the path and slumped on his neck. She could see right through his chestnut hide to the forest floor. He halted, and she slid off his back onto a moist patch of sphagnum moss. She was too exhausted to even remove the sodden greatcoat.