She cocked an eyebrow at him. “How soon can you saddle your bird?”
18
They flew west off the coast and inland aboard Obsidian, settled comfortably upon the riding harness strapped to the Roc’s feathered back, Hunter Predd at the reins and Rue Meridian seated just behind him. The Rover wore her flying leathers, black like her brother’s and molded to her body from constant use. Beneath, her wounds were carefully bound and padded, and the leathers served as light armor to protect them from the rougher abuses she might suffer on her journey. For weapons, she bore a brace of throwing knives about her waist, another tucked into her boot, a long knife strapped to her good thigh, and bow and arrows slung across her back. A great cloak and hood wrapped her against the cold and wind, but even so she found herself ducking her chin and hunching her shoulders to stay warm.
That her brother was angry at her decision to make this journey was the understatement of the year. He was so furious, so stunned by what he considered her obvious stupidity and immeasurably poor judgment, that he ended up shouting at her loud enough to bring work on the airship to a halt until he was finished. No one else said a word, not even Spanner Frew. No one else wanted any part of the argument. Big Red was speaking for them all—loudly enough for all of their voices combined, come to that—and there was nothing further to be said or done. She listened patiently for a few minutes, then began shouting back at him, and eventually threw up her hands and limped away, screaming back one final time to suggest that if he was so worried about her, maybe he’d better hurry along his repair efforts and follow.
It wasn’t fair to chide him so, but she was beyond caring about what was fair and reasonable. What she cared about—the only thing she cared about by then—was that sixteen men and women were trapped inland in strange and dangerous territory with no realistic hope of finding their way out and a madwoman and her reptilian servants hunting for them. She had no idea what might have happened to them, but she didn’t like to think about the possibilities. She wanted reassurance that her worst fears had not been realized. She wanted evidence of their safety. Time was an enemy, swift and elusive. There was risk in what she was doing, but it was a risk worth taking when measured against the consequences of further inaction. Hunter Predd said nothing during the argument or afterwards, but she knew he agreed with her decision. Wing Riders were made cautious by training and from experience, but they knew when it was time to act.
It was late afternoon when they departed, and they flew until the night enveloped them. The blue-gray line of the ocean and clouds was left behind, along with the freezing cold of the coastal air. The inland darkness was warm and soft, a welcome change. The land stretched away before them, an unbroken rippling of green treetops and dark ridgelines dotted with lakes and laced with rivers, hemmed away behind the coastal cliffs and mountain peaks. Far distant, caught in a patch of fading sunlight, an ice field’s glimmer was hard and bright against the enfolding dark.
Hunter Predd turned Obsidian downward to find a campsite. After several minutes of searching, they landed in a clearing atop a broad wooded rise that gave Obsidian several choices of perch and routes of escape and his riders a good view of the surrounding countryside. It wasn’t that they expected trouble, just that they knew enough to be ready for it. It was a country about which they knew virtually nothing. There could be things there that would kill, things that they had never encountered before. Even if they avoided whatever it was that warded Castledown, there would be other dangers.
While Hunter Predd unsaddled Obsidian, groomed his feathers, and watered and fed him, Rue Meridian set about preparing their meal. They had agreed to forgo a fire, to avoid attracting unwanted attention, so she settled for cold cheese, bread, and dried fruit from the stores she had brought from the ship. When Hunter Predd joined her, she brought out an aleskin and shared it with him between bites. They ate their meal in silence, watching the darkness deepen and the stars appear. Light from the full moon rising in the north was brilliant and cleansing, and the land took on a fresh white cast amid the shadows. Atop the rise, the woods were silent. Within the trees, nothing moved.
“How long will it take us to get to where we’re going?” the Wing Rider asked when they were finished eating. He sipped from the aleskin and handed it over to her. “Your best guess will do. I just need some idea of how to pace my bird.”
She drank, as well, and put the container down. “I think we can get there by late tomorrow if we leave at sunrise and push through the day. It took longer coming out, but we were feeling our way and nursing our wounds, so it went more slowly. We’d lost half our power and much of our steering. Your Roc will fly faster than we did.”
“Then we take a look around and see who’s there?”
She shrugged. “When I was a girl and we played hide-and-seek, I learned that the best way to find someone was not to look too hard. I learned that instincts are necessary, that you have to trust them. We can have a look at the bay where the Jerle Shannara put Walker and the others ashore. We can fly inland until we sight Castledown. But I don’t think we can be certain that what we’re looking for is at either place.”
“Or even aboveground.”
She gave him a sharp look.
“What I mean is that the Druid told us the safehold was belowground. That’s all.”
She nodded. “We’ll have to look sharp, in any case, to find them. They won’t just be standing around waiting.”
“We’ll have Obsidian to help with that.” The Wing Rider gestured to where the bird roosted in the dark on a broad outcropping of rocks. “That’s what he’s been trained to do, to look for things we can’t see, to hunt for what’s lost and needs finding. He’s good at it. Better than you and me.”
She eased her injured leg into a new position. It ached from being locked about the Roc during their flight, even for only the two hours they had traveled. How much worse would it be by tomorrow night? She sighed wearily as she rubbed it back to life, careful to avoid the knife wound. It was no worse, she supposed, than she had imagined it would be. She’d already checked the bandage, and there was no evidence of bleeding. The stitches were holding her together so far.
“We’ll rest pretty regularly tomorrow,” Hunter Predd declared, watching her. Her eyes lifted in sharp reproof. “Not just for you,” he added. “For the bird, too. Obsidian travels better with frequent stops.”
“As long as you’re not doing me any special favors.”
His laugh was dry and mirthless. “We wouldn’t want that, would we?”
She passed him the aleskin and leaned back on her elbows. “You can laugh all you want. You didn’t grow up a girl among men the way I did. If you asked for special favors from my brother or my cousins, they laughed at you. Worse, they made things so difficult you wished you’d never opened your mouth. Rover women have a tradition of endurance and toughness born out of constant travel, responsibility for family, and a mostly hard life. In the old days, we had no cities, no place in the world outside of our wagons and our camps. We were nomads, adrift much of the time, at sea or in flight the rest. No one helped us just because they wanted to. We taught them to depend on us, on our skills and our goods, so they had no choice. We have always been a self-sufficient people, even now, as sailors and shipbuilders and mercenaries, and whatever else we can do better than others—”
“Hold on!” he interrupted in protest. “I’m not laughing at you. Do you think I don’t know about your kind of life? We’re not so different, you and me. Wing Riders and Rovers, they’ve always lived apart, always been self-sufficient, always depended on no one. That’s been true since as far back as anyone can remember.”