“Hmm.”
“And McGuppers, Jellyhorn, and Bribbles.” Tobble paused. “So it’s not exactly only my room.”
Again I stopped. Something was wrong. Something in the air.
My fur stood on end. My nose tingled.
I shivered, even though I was no longer cold.
I’d been dawdling, indulging my own weariness.
“Hold on,” I said to Tobble.
I dropped to all fours and took off at a gallop.
9.
Fear
I raced through the trees, then across a stretch of exposed rock dotted with tiny purple flowers. Twice I stumbled, but Tobble hung on, his little arms tight around my neck.
“Keep a sharp lookout,” I said, panting.
“I shall, Byx,” Tobble replied with worrying seriousness, and we both fell silent.
The clouds were breaking up overhead, driven inland by the wind. The sky, revealed in patches, had taken on an angry glow as day eased into night.
I was heading back to the mirabear hive from a different angle, but it didn’t matter. I needed no signposts. I moved on instinct, nose set for home, home, home.
I leapt over a small stream and stopped cold.
“What is it?” Tobble asked.
I didn’t move. I froze the way my parents had taught me and took everything in. To rush is not necessarily to arrive.
Ahead of me, I caught the scent of humans. The guide, perhaps? The horses, the dogs, the rest were farther away.
A two-minute run at full pace, home awaited.
“Something’s wrong,” I said, shaking my head as if arguing with myself.
“What is it?”
“Shhh.” I listened, and so did Tobble.
They weren’t there yet, the noises I was searching for. Wasn’t I near enough to hear the movements of my fellow dairnes? They’d be packing up. They’d be looking for me. Were the trees so thick they muffled sound?
We were about to set out on a huge journey. Preparations should have been underway. Food had to be wrapped in poonan leaves, tools had to be put away, the few mementos we carried had to be slipped into pouches.
What I heard was not a sound. It was an absence of sound. A void.
I tried to pin down a fleeting scent. It was almost nothing, almost impossible for me to make out. The wind didn’t serve me well, but from the dark recesses of my mind, an ancient emotion grew.
Fear.
I sat on my haunches and Tobble slid off.
“I have to go,” I said, and by the time Tobble began to answer, I was already on my way.
I ran, tripping over a fallen branch, slipping on leaves.
I wove. I darted. I plowed through the undergrowth, heedless, eyes half closed to avoid the whipping branches.
Again I stopped.
Lost. I was lost.
Frantically I panted, hating my short legs and weak lungs that never, ever allowed me the pleasure of being the first or the fastest.
The treacherous breeze shifted and it hit me.
A smell so thick and horrible that it crawled down my throat like lava.
I knew before I knew.
“No,” I whispered.
The world was silent, except for Tobble, far behind but gamely trying to catch up.
I saw a hill that I recognized because of the huge, lonely pine that stood atop it. The camp was just over the hill.
I panted and gasped, climbing up and up, and there at the summit where the mass of earth no longer stifled sound, the silence was gone.
I heard.
Howls and screams.
Agony.
Pain beyond words.
Terror and despair.
I ran.
10.
The Unthinkable
It took forever. And yet it came too quickly, the moment when I was sure.
Careening through the trees, I saw the humans in silver and red with their arrows and their broadswords, their drooling dogs and panting horses.
They were mayhem. They were blood. They were darkness.
Not poachers. These men were something else. They didn’t wear motley clothing, they didn’t wield mismatched weapons. They wore identical red-and-silver tunics, revealing arms covered in chain mail. Their heads were protected by conical steel helmets cut with a narrow slit for their eyes. Their boots glittered with spurs. Some men had swords. Others clutched spears.
These were not poachers. These were the Murdano’s soldiers.
The mirabear hive, thirty feet high and twice as long, was golden and slick from the rain. Fires raged inside. Black smoke billowed from every opening.
One of the soldiers leapt off his horse and poked at a mound of fur with his spear.
It was Dalyntor, the elder of our pack. White muzzled, but wise in the ways of humans.
Not wise enough.
And then I saw them.
All of them.
My father.
My mother.
My siblings.
They were piled on the ground like discarded hides, blood pouring, white and pearly, soaking the leaves, eyes glassy and open, mouths open. Torn and stabbed.
They lay in a mound, as if they’d been too late to scatter, my parents on top, protecting as always.
I ran.
I ran to maim, to kill, to exact revenge, growling from some primitive place inside me that I didn’t know existed.
I was almost in the open when something struck me hard in the side. It yanked me onto my back, legs tangled.
I stared in disbelief at the trident arrowhead buried in my right side. The filament attached to it, nearly invisible but capable of restraining a charging vulf stag, was taut.
I tried to pull out the arrow, but the points were barbed. It wasn’t a killing arrow. It was an arrow meant for capture.
I grabbed the filament and tried to break it with my teeth. I raged and kicked.
From behind a tree I heard a voice. “Be still, you fool!”
I would not be still. I would not be stopped. I would go to my mother, my father. I would go to my brothers and sisters, my pack, my—
I heard a rush of feet, twisted too late, and felt a blow on the back of my neck.
But I felt it for only a second, maybe two, before I was lost in swirling darkness.
Part Two
Captives
11.
The Guide
In my mind I was moving, but I could not move.
I could see.
I could smell.
I could hear.
But I could not move. I was restrained, held in place.
I was hanging, stomach down, over a saddleless horse. I rocked forward and back as the beast navigated a stony path. Somehow I didn’t slip off. Was I tied to him, as well as bound hand and foot?
My face bounced against the horse’s side. The stink of him—sweat and dung and weariness—was suffocating.
I was a carcass, dangling like a dead mouse in the jaws of a woodcat.
What was happening? My thoughts came slow and thick as mud.
My head lolled and snapped with each jerky step. When I strained to raise my head, I saw pine and bulla tree branches low to the ground, their tangy needles scratching the horse’s legs.
I realized with a shock that we were in sunlight. Evening and night had come and gone. Had I been unconscious that long?
I saw hard-packed dirt and sharp-edged rocks.