Dragon! Book One: Stealing the egg

CHAPTER TEN

At the news of “they’re comin’ for us,” Gareth tried to leap to his feet and failed. He looked down at his legs as if they betrayed him by turning into logs, and tried again. He finally stood on weak legs as stiff as if they were starched, and fought to clear his mind while thinking new thoughts. All the trudging in the soft sand the day before had turned his legs to mush and this morning both legs protested the slightest movement. Everything in his mind had also turned to mush except for the understanding that the men from the white boat were after them. He turned to Tom, who was busy gathering their few items and looked ready to travel from this place to the far end of the world.

“You went back to the beach and spied on them?” Gareth asked.

“Course I did. Went early this morning and watched them get their selves ready to catch up with us. They were smart. They had a few gather what supplies they could recover from the wreckage washed up on the beach while two others scouted until they found our prints.”

“They found our trail?”

“Dogs.” Tom knelt and slurped water from the stream. “Better get yourself a good drink. No idea when you’ll get the next one.”

“What do you mean, dogs?”

“They have two hounds sniffin’ us out. Five men.”

“Why are there dogs?”

“Boat like that is always smugglin’ or chasin’ after somebody. Probably carries a fair amount of coin and weapons on board, too.”

“They’re watch dogs.”

“They left some of their wounded on the beach. They took time to bury a few this morning, early. No doubt, others are missing and drowned. Not much to see of what’s left of the two boats. Just broken planks and wood floating or washed ashore. Now get yourself that drink and let’s move. We got nothing to carry more water in, so fill your belly.”

“The dogs are trained to track men?”

“Rumor is that’s one of their regular jobs. They’re good at findin’ people that don’t want to be found. For a reward or fee. Dogs can be a big help.”

The water flowing in the stream was cold and fresh. Gareth filled himself and splashed his face, then nodded to Tom, who again led the way. He looked over his shoulder occasionally to make sure Gareth was keeping up, and he gradually increased their speed as Gareth’s cramped and stiff muscles relaxed as the day wore on. They stayed on a narrow path that countless animal paws and hooves created, flat and easy to navigate.

“You’re not sore?” Gareth asked as his calf cramped, again. “You’re old. I should be in the lead.”

“A little stiff earlier this morn, but I’m ready to walk the rest of the day. Fishin’ keeps a man healthy.”

Gareth didn’t like the answer. Walking and fishing didn’t go together. Tom was an old man and shouldn’t set a pace Gareth could hardly match, and fishing didn’t have anything to do with it. Walking the remainder of the day didn’t sound possible. He adjusted the egg bag to his other shoulder. “Shouldn’t we get off this path so they have a harder time following us?”

“I’m thinkin’ we need to put distance between us, first. We’ll move faster than them, at least for a while. Besides, it’s no harder for a dog to track us here than in the trees. Easier to travel for us, of course, but, later on, we’ll go our own way when they’re following comfortably behind and think they know where we are. Let them get tired and make mistakes.”

“They’re going to get more tired than us?” Gareth huffed.

“Only if they try to keep up. Unlike us, they can give up this chase anytime.”

“They have dogs!”

“I know. Can’t let that bother us, now. Worry about things we can change. Besides, dogs don’t make them move any faster. Now be quiet, I’m too busy walkin’ and talkin’.”

Gareth felt his mind still coming awake, and recognized the rebuke, but too many things were creeping around in his fuzzy mind. He trotted several steps to catch up with Tom. “Are they going to catch us?”

“Not for a while.”

But they will. He’s trying to keep that from me. Gareth fell back behind Tom again. That was not the answer he wanted. Still, he appreciated the truth. He considered the possible outcomes if they should catch up. When they caught up. They’d feel Gareth owed them a new white ship he couldn’t afford. Somebody was going to take the egg and sell it, then turn him in for the reward. They’d probably just kill Tom, outright. Maybe feed him to their dogs as a reward for tracking them down.

Tom might get the better part of the deal.

The path grew wider and generally followed the contours of the land, heading away from the ocean. They crossed another small stream, but they continued without stopping. The forest on either side of them stood dark and forbidding, and the undergrowth grew so thick they could see only a few steps into the shadows. While the sun was high above, they traveled in a dank, almost dim tunnel of vegetation.

Gareth fell further and further behind Tom but refused to ask the old man to slow. He trotted to catch up more than once. At another stream, they paused to scoop water in their hands for a quick drink and rest. Tom carried an old canvas bag over his shoulder Gareth hadn’t noticed. Hand-sewn from the remains of a sail, from the looks of it. Tom always seemed prepared. Tom reached inside, fumbled around, and withdrew oiled paper. He unrolled it, pulled out a brown stick of jerky and handed it to Gareth. “Might want to scrape off some of the pepper before eating.”

They didn’t stay at the stream to eat. Gareth used his fingernail to scrape as many off as many black dots of pepper he could find. His stomach growled repeatedly, but he had come to trust the old man. Finally, he tried to chew off a bite and found he had to carry it in his mouth like a cigar, as his teeth worked their way through the tough meat.

The remaining spices burned his lips and tongue. The flakes of black pepper would have killed me. At the next stream, he paused to scoop a handful of water. And the next. The terrain slowly changed, becoming one of more rolling hills and the trees and the undergrowth thinned, until Gareth and Tom stood together at the ridge of a wide canyon filled with tall brown grasses and only a few scrub trees. The path wound down to the middle of the valley where a shallow river sparkled. A volcano smoked in the far distance.

High above them, a reddish colored dragon flew past. It changed directions and dived, looking at first as if it spotted them, but before they ran for cover it changed course again and dived into the waist high grass. It emerged with a tan animal in its mouth, but they couldn’t tell what it was. It flew in the direction of the volcano.

“Different dragon,” Gareth muttered in relief to himself.

“You’d know,” Tom said.

At the edge of the shallow river in the center of the valley, Tom turned. “Hold on here. We’ll cross back and retrace our tracks and try to confuse the dogs. Maybe the men, too. Won’t even get our feet wet, but they will.”

Tom carefully walked backward, retracing his footsteps, with Gareth duplicating the act. When they reached a field of black lava skirting the edge of the path they slowed. A few tufts of grass and no shrubs, but mostly black lava. Tom paused. “Step off the path carefully. Stay right behind me. Don’t leave any scuffs or sign behind, if you can avoid it.”

“Will this lose them?”

Tom continued to step only on bare rock as he led the way, almost like a dancer doing an intricate step, turning south in the direction of Drakesport, but not following any trail or pathway. He said, “Lose them? No. Maybe delay them for a time is my hope. I’m thinkin’ the dogs will get across the river and scout for our scent and not find it. Won’t take them long to figure out we doubled back. But they’ll still have to check and see if we went up river or down, and they’ll use the dogs to sniff each river bank to find where we left the water.”

“I see. Since we didn’t enter the water, they might go a ways upstream, and then go all the way back and try downstream. But they’ll figure it out pretty fast.” Gareth said.

“Course they will. With luck, it’ll take them a lot longer to find our new trail than it took us to create it. Slow them down a mite. Getting’ late in the day, too. They might decide to camp beside the river for the night.”

Tom’s answer sounded like a sound decision. His language again sounded more refined, and his vocabulary had expanded. Gareth tuned his ear to listen more carefully. Tom was ever-changing to meet the circumstances. Who is the real Tom?

The ground ahead rose and fell, and the slope of the river valley climbed to another crest. Gareth struggled to keep up with Tom, as they climbed it. He slowed and fell back, breathing hard and his legs aching. Tomorrow morning would be worse than today.

Tom pulled to a stop and rested near a rock outcropping.

Gareth caught up. He drew in a few deep breaths, ready to continue their trek. He panted, “Be dark before long.”

“That it will, and we still have a few hours to travel, this day. We can put some real distance between them and us tonight, but we have work to do first.”

Gareth placed his hands on his knees and drew in several more deep breaths before answering. When he looked up the old man was already too far ahead to talk. Head down, he followed, fighting back tears of frustration. He kept his head down for most of the climb up the hill, watching the path, and paying no attention to anything around them. One foot ahead of the other. One more step. One more.

“This looks like a good spot to me,” Tom said, surprising Gareth because he was standing only a few paces away.

Tom barely looked winded. Gareth set his mind to match whatever came next.

Gareth looked back over his shoulder. He found they had climbed the long, scrub-covered hillside, and the river was easy to spot in the distance. They were near the crest, and the sun was low in the sky. He joined Tom in sitting on the bare, rocky ground, and together they examined the wide valley below from behind the cover of low shrubs.

Tom pointed. “See those trees way over there? The path we followed is down there, trailing along the edge.”

Gareth saw the trees, but couldn’t make out the path, and then as his eyes traveled nearer the river, he spotted it and followed it back. “Got it.”

“I’m workin’ my eyes along the path, now that I know where to look. Don’t see any sign of them. I’m thinking we outpaced them today, but if they’re using the dogs on leashes, we may have moved faster anyhow.”

“Are we stopping here for another reason?”

“Besides, you needin’ a rest?” Tom chuckled. “From the time we’ll first see them down there, I think we can decide how fast they’re comin’. Being sailing folk, I didn’t expect much from them on land, but you can never tell.”

“Aren’t we wasting time?”

“No. Look at it like we’re similar to soldiers gathering information. We know how long it took us to walk to that river down there, and all the way up that hill to this spot. Add some time for their confusion over our backtracking, and we know about how far behind they are. I can already tell you we’re moving faster.”

“How?”

“If they were as fast as us they’d already be in that valley down there beside the river.”

“So we wait?”

Tom nodded. “We wait. You know, it’s possible someone with them knows the area and they took a different route to cut us off up ahead. We need to make sure they’re still back there behind us, just because I’m a distrusting sort of man. Take a nap if you want. We have a distance to go before this day’s over.”

Gareth closed his eyes but felt guilty. If anyone needed a rest, it should be Tom, but when he glanced at him, he was staring intently into the distance where the path came from the forest and started down the other side of the valley. “Want me to take the first watch?”

“Shouldn’t be long enough for setting a watch, but I appreciate the offer.”

Gareth closed his eyes and relaxed. His mind slipped into a state as soft as warm mittens. The long shadows of late afternoon protected them from the sun and the residual warmth of the rocks soaked into him.

“I see them,” Tom said, his voice calm and unexcited.

Gareth came awake with a start. The sun was a little lower in the sky, almost touching the far peaks, and the shadows somewhat longer, almost dusk. Tom’s eyes were pinned on a distant location, and Gareth saw a flick of motion against the tan background of the brown grasses in the valley. A thin line of darker color moved along the path they had walked earlier.

Gareth couldn’t pick out individuals, or the two dogs, but imagined them leading the others with their noses to the ground. Tom watched in silence, a slight curl to his lip.

A few short minutes passed before Tom stroked his beard and said, “Take them a while to get to the river. Be almost full dark by then. If they spend any time trying to find our scent, it will be dark. My guess is they’ll reach the river and decide to stay the night. Pick up our scent about daylight.”

“If the dogs are confused in the morning, they might not find where we went until mid-morning.”

The fisherman stood and moved back from the vantage point until he was out of sight to any people below. “Maybe. We can hope, but chances are it won’t delay them long. Always possible they’ll travel through the night, too. Don’t forget, those are professional bounty hunters.”

Gareth said, “We’re rested some and can travel faster. Be nice to know if they come after us tonight, but I guess we plan like they’re going to.”

Without answering, Tom led the way again. As the sun disappeared, the stars shed enough light to allow them to pick their way through the scrub and dry grass. Later the moon would help. Their course veered west, as well as south, and eventually, they left grasslands and entered under the canopy of deciduous trees, mostly maple and oak, where they followed whatever narrow animal trails they found instead of wider and more traveled paths. They switched trails often, as one crossed another.

The egg hung heavy in the bag carried on the front of Gareth, and the leather bag now seemed almost a part of him, he was so used to it. It swayed and bounced in step to his pace. His concentration remained on the path ahead and his next step. He nearly missed feeling the first soft movement from within the egg.

Instantly awake and attentive, Gareth continued walking. When nothing else happened, he decided it had just been the egg slipping in the tight bag. He became drowsy again, eyes drooping, but he continued walking at the same steady pace Tom used.

The egg moved again. One leathery side of the egg bulged, and a sharp, solid tap came from inside.