“What of it?” Ciletha asked, frowning.
“It has his scent! If we wear clothing like that, the dogs won’t know who to chase! Come now, stay quiet while I steal away!” Ciletha almost reached to pull him back as he slipped off, but held her hand, heart pounding. It was a bright idea, far brighter than she would have expected of Orgoru—but the dear boy was so clumsy, so fumble-fingered, that he was bound to wake the forester and bring down his wrath. Moving silently, Ciletha followed him and caught up the nearest stick of wood for a club. Orgoru was all she had now, and she wasn’t about to let the forester take him from her.
But she didn’t need the stick. Amazingly, Orgoru managed to be deft for once in his life. He found a long stick and lay flat at the edge of the firelight, reaching in to pull the forester’s clothes to him one piece at a time. Holding the whole pile under an arm, he turned away to creep off into the night, back to the brook. Ciletha joined him again, heart pounding, but they were a hundred yards downstream before she dared talk. “How clever you were, Orgoru!”
“Why, thank you.” She could almost see him expand in the darkness. “I did manage it pretty well, didn’t I?”
“But shouldn’t you have left him your clothes? The poor man will be naked!”
“Then let him go bare,” Orgoru said grimly. “The longer I’d stayed near, the greater the chance he’d have wakened—and If I’d left him my clothes, I might as well have told him who did the stealing. This way, he just might put it down to a badger or a bear, and thank the Protector for his life.”
“Wise,” she said slowly, “but I feel sorry for the poor man.”
“Would he have felt sorry for you once the magistrate told him to catch you?” Orgoru demanded, then answered his own question. “Yes, he might have felt very sorry for you, but he’d have chased you anyway. Besides, it’s not as though he was hurt, Ciletha.” He halted in a patch of moonlight, looking about him. “We’ve come far enough. Let’s change clothes now.”
He gave her the forester’s boots, but they were way too big, so he had to settle for cutting the shirt in two and tying it over her own shoes. He wore the leggings and the boots himself, and together they slipped off down a gametrail, hoping the forester’s clothes would cover their own scents.
The hounds bayed, closer and closer, and Miles, looking through the crack between the two boards, saw them come trotting down the road, their handler holding one leash in each hand and trotting himself, to stay near them. Behind him marched six men dressed in brown and green, with a seventh behind them who wore maroon, with a hip-length robe and chain of office—the bailiff of Miles’s hometown with half a dozen foresters. Miles stiffened, and Dirk hissed, “Company?”
“Be ready for drastic measures,” Gar muttered.
Surprised, Miles glanced at him, and saw him pull a piece of right-angled wood from his shirt—then two pieces of wood that tapered on the ends. He turned back to the spyhole, suddenly thinking he didn’t want to know what Gar was going to do with the strange objects. He heard clicking and slithering noises behind him, and knew Dirk was doing whatever Gar was, too. He couldn’t look, though—he was fascinated by the hounds trotting a hundred feet away. They came to the pathway to the barn and stalled, milling about, their voices turning querulous. Miles held his breath and hoped.
The hounds cast about in larger and. larger circles, but their barking stayed confused. The foresters called to one another, growing angry and frustrated—but they kept their hounds where they were, sniffing in an expanding spiral.
“They’ll hit our trail sooner or later.” Gar rose and went to the ladder. “Time for a bit of misdirection.”
“Stay where you are,” Dirk told Miles, “and don’t worry—we’ve confused harder cases than those guys.”
Miles stared, speechless, as they scrambled down the ladder, then ran for the barn’s back door. They slowed to an easy stroll as they went through. He spun back to the crack between the two boards and stared, watching. It seemed a year before Gar and Dirk ambled into view, and when they did, they came from far off to his left. They had circled around to come from the trees along a stream that curved through the pasture. Dirk called out and waved; the foresters looked up, then turned and waited for him, frowning. As they came closer, the hunters looked them up and down and seemed to relax a little. The bailiff stepped forward, fists on hips and chin thrust out. Miles held his breath; with the bailiff come himself to lead the foresters in pursuit of the fugitive, it was no wonder they hadn’t let the search lapse. Still, he had to admit they had dawdled as much as they could, to give him a decent lead.
As Gar and Dirk came closer, the bailiff called out, “Which reeve do you serve, and why have you come?”
The two companions halted and glanced at one another. Miles gnashed his teeth—if he had known they were going to talk to the bailiff, he would have told them to say their master was the Reeve of Ulithorn! That was far enough away so that no one here should know anyone there, except perhaps the magistrate—but by the time the bailiff reported back to him, Gar and Dirk would be long gone and, hopefully, Miles with them.
The companions turned back to the bailiff. “We’re between, just now,” Gar said, “ordered back to the Protector.”
Miles released a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding, and the bailiff stiffened. To be ordered to the Protector meant they would become part of his army, and everyone wanted to stay on good terms with the Protector’s soldiers.
“There is certainly no need to see your travel permits, then,” the bailiff said, forcing a smile.
“No, certainly not,” Gar agreed, returning the smile. “We’re growing tired of walking, though, and wondered if you could tell us where to find horses.”
“I’m surprised you weren’t given them—”
“None available,” Dirk explained. “We’d just rounded up a band of outlaws, but we’d lost five horses in the fighting.” He shrugged. “No men lost, though a few of our friends will be some months recovering. That didn’t leave our reeve any mounts to spare, though, so he gave us the wherewithal to replace them when we could.”
“An order to supply you, or gold?”
“Gold,” Gar said, “but we haven’t found anyone with horses to spare, and it would have been unkind to commandeer them, especially since we weren’t given a date for reporting.”
“Ah, some unofficial leave, eh?” The bailiff nodded. “Well, there’s a farmer named Landry hereabouts, who raises horses for the magistrates. His farm is seven miles that way.” He pointed northeast, past the barn where Miles hid.
“Thank you for the information,” Gar said, inclining his head. “May we return the courtesy?”
The bailiff gave him a sour smile. “Only if you can tell us where to find the runaway we’re hunting.”
“Runaway?” Dirk and Gar exchanged a glance, then Dirk said, “What did he look like?”
“Not short, but not tall, either. Round-faced, dark-haired.”
“So that’s why he seemed so nervous!” Dirk said to Gar. Miles’s heart dropped down into his boots. His mind screamed at him to run, but he was too stunned to move. “You’ve seen him? Where?” The bailiff seemed almost to pounce, and his men stiffened.
“Back at the ford, carrying a huge fish on a string.” Gar’s nose wrinkled. “Dead since dawn, at least. He walked with us to this very place, where he told us we might find horses for sale at a village yonder.” He pointed toward the copse from which he and Dirk had come. “We hadn’t gone but a quarter mile, though, before we saw there were no horses pastured. We came back to give the fellow a good thrashing for his lie, but we see he’s gone.”