"How many men have to die before you admit you don't know what you're doing? What about me? Or Saltlick, is he next? You've drawn us deeper and deeper into this mess, without a word of explanation. Now that it's just the three of us, maybe it's time you tried a little honesty. What exactly are we doing here, Estrada?"
If I'd hoped for a dramatic reaction, I was disappointed. Her face was inscrutable. Seconds passed. Finally, she said, very softly, "You're bait."
"What?" I couldn't believe I'd heard her right.
This time she shouted it: "You're bait!"
Then, to my astonishment, Estrada burst into tears. I couldn't look at her. I swung away and stormed towards the other end of the clearing, appalled by the use of such an unfair strategy. I sat down again, with my back to her and my face to a line of whitethorn bushes. My anger had frozen into a cold, hard knot in my stomach. Bait? I was nothing more to Estrada than a worm wriggling on a hook.
It made sense, of course. What better way to lure Moaradrid than with his insane obsession for capturing Saltlick and me? Rationalising it didn't make me feel any better. A fragment of calm amidst the fury noted how absurd it was that I should feel betrayed when Estrada had never made any pretence of not using me. I ignored it. The fact was, promises… well, not promises, but assurances had been… perhaps not made, but implied, definitely implied.
Something heavy tapped my shoulder, so unexpectedly that I almost tumbled into the grass.
"Saltlick?"
The giant hovered over me like some bizarre monolith ejected by the earth.
"What do you want? Can't you see I'm…" I let the sentence trail off, not wanting to say "sulking", and went back to staring at the bushes.
Another tap, this one insistent enough that I felt it in the depths of my collarbone.
" Sorry."
"You want to apologise? Saltlick, for once this is hardly your fault."
He pointed. I followed his outstretched arm. There was Estrada pacing at the far end of the glade. I couldn't tell if she was still crying.
"Sorry."
"You want me to apologise? Not a chance. Didn't you hear? All she wants us for is to lure Moaradrid into some trap."
Saltlick sighed violently, and his features contorted with frustration. The hand that had been pointing darted like some fleshy bird of prey and grasped a hold of my cloak. An instant later, I was dangling in the air, a good two paces from the ground.
"What are you doing? Put me down!"
I struggled furiously, and then realised I ran the risk of strangling myself in my own cloak and gave up.
"If you put me down now," I mumbled through the hood now tangled over my head, "we can forget this whole thing."
Evidently, that wasn't the plan. I could hear his trudging footsteps, accompanied by the disconcerting sensation of my entire body swinging at each impact. With a lurch that seemed briefly to transfer my genitals to where my kidneys would normally be, I found myself back on solid ground. I clawed the hood out of eyes, and found myself staring into the face of a confused Estrada.
From behind me, Saltlick repeated, " Sorry."
"All right, damn it. Look, perhaps I was wrong to blame you entirely for all this. Maybe you weren't to know what a despicable cockroach Mounteban is. I mean, I'm sure this absurd quest to free the Castoval is well-intentioned."
A slight smile pushed some of the anger from her mouth. "That's the worst apology I've ever heard."
"Really? Because for me it was pretty good. Care to see if you can do any better?"
Estrada looked puzzled.
"Your apology. I'd like to hear it. I think Saltlick would too."
She glanced up at him imploringly. Either I was right, or he hadn't been following the conversation, because he didn't say anything to contradict me.
"Maybe you're right." She coughed, and stared briefly at her feet. I could swear a tint of red had entered her cheeks. "Maybe I should have trusted you both from the start. It's possible that my faith in Castilio was a little… misjudged… and, well…"
"You shouldn't have used us as bait without so much as telling us?"
"Yes. That too."
"Apology accepted." I spat into my hand, and offered it for her to shake.
This time there was no hesitation in her smile. "Don't push your luck, Damasco."
• • • •
Having assessed the situation with calmer heads, we both realised that a shouted argument hadn't been the best way to keep our presence concealed. We were lucky we hadn't brought Moaradrid's men swarming down on us. With our numbers more than halved and Saltlick's chronic aversion to violence, we'd inevitably be lost in a fight. As much as I hated to admit it, things looked bleak without Mounteban and his thugs to watch out for us.
Estrada, who seemed incapable of giving up, was quick to list the positives. Mounteban had left us more than ample supplies, and yesterday had told her carefully where we were in relation to our next objective, the ferry port at Casta Canto. It was only a couple of hours to the southwest, and should be visible beyond the brow of the next hill. "We'll be safe for a while if we can just find a fast boat."
I nearly asked if by "find" she meant "steal", but decided she'd been taunted on that subject enough by Mounteban. That wasn't our real concern, in any case. More to the point was that any vessel quick enough to afford us an escape would likely be too small to take Saltlick's weight. Would she be prepared to abandon him if the need arose?
For that matter, would I get my chance to leave them both behind?
There seemed no point dwelling on distant dilemmas when we'd be lucky to make it even as far as Casta Canto. Estrada took the lead, pointing towards the brow of one particular hill and declaring, "It should be just over there."
I judged by the position of the sun that she was probably right. Remembering how Mounteban had forced us to crawl through the fence of bramble and whitethorn bushes the night before, I asked, "Saltlick, can you clear a path?"
He glanced at Estrada for confirmation.
"Try not to make too much noise," she said, sounding a little guilty for agreeing with me.
Saltlick plunged a hand into the mass of thorny tendrils. He tore the bush from the ground and tossed it over his shoulder, in one fluid motion. It landed with a rustling crash at the far side of the glade. A moment later, another shared its fate.
We trooped into the gap. A steep climb lay beyond. It soon became clear that it would be too much trouble to have Saltlick deal with every thorn bush or fallen tree-trunk that blocked our path; easier by far to add to the scratches and bruises we'd incurred the day before.
Without Mounteban, we had no idea where to look for paths, if paths there were. The going was slow and difficult. It might have taken a couple of hours by an easier route, but with our approach of meandering through the densest, most inhospitable foliage, it was well past lunchtime before we scaled the hilltop.
By the time we saw the Casto Mara, a distant ribbon of blue-flecked grey far below, even Saltlick was dripping with sweat. There was some small comfort in the fact that straying so far from beaten paths was probably all that had kept us out of Moaradrid's hands.
We sat crouched behind a row of pines, pretending we couldn't be seen when Saltlick was five times wider than the tree supposedly hiding him. Below, a steep wooded slope much like the one we'd just climbed tumbled down to the river, wide and fastflowing here and laced with fringes of white where it churned over hidden rocks and beds of gravel.
Casta Canto nestled in one crook, a huddle of large wood buildings set amidst great ziggurats of logs: the small town was the main channel through which timber cut in the forests of Paen Acha made its way out into the wider Castoval. A number of flat-bottomed boats were moored around the crude harbour, none of them looking very suited to our purpose. Nearer, the ferry — a fenced rectangular platform strung from chains moored on either bank — was flopping like a dying fish in the middle of the flow.