When she turned back to face the front, she saw to her surprise that they were already half way across the river. The horse showed no sign of slowing.
Pia grinned suddenly.
“Never a rope for us, Jack,” she asserted. “I hope Kara understands the message we left.”
Jack didn’t reply. She knew he was still angry at her for stealing Kara’s sword, but she wouldn’t let that dampen her spirits now. They had escaped once again.
“Come back!” a man shouted behind her. “For the love of Saradomin, Pia, come back!”
The man’s panicked voice caused Pia to look over her shoulder again. She felt the horse rise beneath her as the its hooves found firm ground.
There were a half-dozen men gathered on the opposite river bank, clad in black-leather armour. Two or three of them were gesturing wildly, beckoning her to return.
Do they take me for an idiot?
“Don’t be a fool, girl!” another shouted, waving to her. “It’s not too late.”
“If I go back I die,” Pia shouted angrily. “My brother, too. We will take our chances-”
“But there are no chances in Morytania,” the first man yelled. “Please. Please, come back to us, Pia. Kara-Meir has asked that you be returned unharmed. The King will honour his pledge to her.”
“You don’t know what you are doing, girl,” a third man cried.
The horse broke from the water now and Pia couldn’t reply. She tightened her legs on the horse’s flank as the animal clambered wearily up the steep bank, water running off of it in long, thin rivulets.
She looked back at her pursuers. They were arguing, their arms gesturing wildly. They stopped, and one of the men put an arrow to his bow.
“Pia?” Jack said gently. He leaned back into her, as if trying to make himself small.
It seemed to happen in slow motion. The man sighted his arrow toward her and loosed.
The black-feathered arrow missed her by a scant yard, passing in front of her face.
“Pia, we must run!” Jack said in panic.
“You said you wanted us unharmed!” Pia shouted in anger. Already the man was reloading, and she saw how others reached for their bows.
“It is better for you, Pia,” the first man shouted. She couldn’t be certain, but it seemed as if he was afraid. “It is better for you to die now, before you go any farther.”
They mean to kill us. They really do. It was not a warning shot.
Pia shouted and slapped the horse’s neck, pulling the reins and digging in her heels as she forced the animal away from the bank. Arrows snapped past them and overhead, but none found their mark, and within a minute of riding, when she turned back, the river had vanished from sight in the deep undergrowth.
The sounds of their pursuers were lost, as well.
As if they were never there.
Although she was determined to keep track of the river, and cross it again after they had travelled a safe distance, within an hour Pia was lost.
She didn’t dare say anything to Jack for fear of making him afraid. The sun was obscured behind a veil of green fog that grew denser as they travelled, and the woods gave way to a swampy marshland. At its edge, Pia halted and dismounted for the first time in many hours. Her body protested in agony, and in an effort to spare her brother the same she helped him from the horse as gently as she was able. His inner thighs were coated in sweat and dried blood from where the jolting of the horse had chafed his skin. She had no doubt her own legs were in a similar condition, yet she refused to look.
“We will rest here, for an hour or so,” she told him. “Let the horse get her breath back.”
“And then we start south?” Jack asked. His voice was low. “We can’t be more than two miles from the river now.” Her brother spoke in a hushed whisper, as if afraid to offend some dreadful observer. He peered around them, into the mist. But there was no movement, no sound.
Pia nodded.
“Then we start south and cross back over the river a few miles downstream.” She gave her brother her most roguish smile. “We did it, Jack. We did it again. We survived.”
I haven’t the heart to tell him that I’m hopelessly lost. Nor that I lost the dagger that kept Jerrod so afraid.
The thought of the werewolf caused her to glance around, but the fog seemed impenetrable. They seemed so vulnerable here, intruders in a place that would never forgive their trespass. Pia shivered.
“Perhaps we should start for the south now,” she muttered. “I don’t like it here.” The horse fidgeted, as if sharing her anxiousness.
“Do you think they followed us across the river?” Jack’s face was doubtful.
“Maybe,” she replied. But she really didn’t think so.
It is not them I fear.
She ran her hand across her face and looked down. It came away with a bloody smear. She remembered the thorn that had cut her cheek in their rush to the river bank. Still it hadn’t dried.
The iron smell seemed to hang in the stale air, impossibly strong.
“Pia. Look.”
She looked to where he pointed across the swamp. In the hazy distance she thought she saw something. It looked like a cloaked figure, but as quickly as she spotted it, the fog rose up from the black waters that separated them, and obscured it. She strained to find it again, but the green mist hid the horizon from view.
She felt her stomach tighten.
“Pia… Pia I’m frightened.” Jack turned to look at her. “I want to go back. I want to go back to Kara and I want to tell her I’m sorry. Please, Pia. Please. Can we go back?”
We made a mistake coming here. A dreadful mistake.
“Get on the horse, Jack. Now.”
Suddenly she shivered. She breathed out as her brother did as she had instructed, and she placed her hand on the hilt of Kara’s sword.
What would she do here?
Pia was cold now-unnaturally so. Her hand shook on the sword hilt, her grip weak.
“Come on, Pia. Get up.” Muted though it was, Jack’s voice cut through her fear. Quickly she clambered into the saddle behind him. The horse snorted once, its body steaming from her exertion. Clearly the creature was exhausted.
From her vantage point, Pia looked back to the swamp. The green mist faded slightly, and she could see the place where the figure had stood. There was no sign of it now.
Jack was looking, too.
“Did you see him?” he asked.
“I thought I did,” Pia said, “but only for a second. I think it was a man. It doesn’t matter though. We’re going now.”
She turned the horse, and guided it forward, not sure of the direction she was going. Her route followed the firmer land that lay at the swamp’s edge.
Time seemed meaningless in that fog, and she didn’t know how long it had been before they heard a sound-like a man coughing-as it echoed across the dim expanse. Pia froze and she felt Jack stiffen. Her skin crawled uncontrollably.
There across the mire stood a diminutive figure, his arms draped around the gnarled form of a dead tree, his face hidden behind the decaying bark. As Pia stared she saw that saw it was an old man, with skin as white as milk. His clothes were torn rags through which she could see his ribs, and arms that were devoid of any muscle. She had seen people like that before, beggars who starved in the winter.
“Don’t let him see us, Pia,” Jack hissed. “Please. There’s something not right about him.”
The man coughed again, and as he did so he moved, his head sliding out from behind the bark.