The judges seemed to have the same idea. I saw five shapes go overhead. One of them was Massha's familiar roundness. She gave me a thumb's-up as she veered to the right I turned to the left and lost sight of her.
Beyond the lip of the valley hills closed in on the path until I was threading a round-topped maze. Hoofprints told me at least one of the others had come this way, too. It had been a brilliant idea, but I didn't flatter myself that it was unique. I kicked Fireball into a trot. We rode along the bed of a foot-wide stream, kicking pebbles. I didn't care if Glory heard me; I wasn't in the running for the prize, nice as it would be to have. I was there to see that there wasn't any funny stuff. So far I had not lost track of any of the hunters. I took a small device that Massha had given me out of my belt pouch (you can't get into pants pockets in the saddle) and flipped it open.
The flat screen was as neat as any tracker you could buy in a hunting and fishing shop on Perv: the tiny blips superimposed over a map of the landscape indicated the contestants, the dragons, the observers and the palace staff. We'd purposely unblipped Glory so that if the device fell into someone else's hands they couldn't use it to find her. I traced the trails. Yes, sooner or later they all met up ahead. I'd just go and wait up there for the confusion to clear up. Nothing was in my way. Except one blip, almost directly ahead of me. I looked up.
“You! What are you doing out here?”
“Hello, Aahz.”
“Massha, look to your left! Fine that rider five points. He's cheating!” Carisweather ordered. The big fluffy guy pointed. I looked down. The fancy-pants dude in the turban had slipped a gizmo out and was twisting a dial on the face of it. You couldn't call me big know-all when it came to hunting contests, but if I'm an expert in anything, it's magikal gadgets. I knew a variable-output controller when I saw it The silky snake was breaking in on the spells being used by hunters trying to control their dragons and, by the smirk on his scaly face, he was enjoying the resultant chaos. With a flick of my flight ring I dropped down next to him and picked it out of his hand.
“Naughty, naughty,” I said, waggling my finger at him. In fury, his forked tongue flicked in and out of his mouth. “Promises, promises,” I sighed, and flew up to join my fellow judges. Three of the four had big grins on their faces, but Carisweather shook his head.
“We're only observers, Mistress Massha,” he said, disapprovingly.
“You can say that if you want, big chief,” I told him, “but one of those dragons could kill somebody.”
“That, alas, is one of the pitfalls of the contest,” Carisweather said, mournfully. “These are blood sports, and, once in a while, blood runs.”
“That should be when it's unavoidable, Hot Pants,” I said, in a huff. I can't stand it when people give me that “accidents of war” garbage. “This is avoidable. Short of searching everybody, we can't find these tricks until they try to use one, but that doesn't mean they get to keep it once we see it” I tossed the disk in the air and caught it again. “He can have it back at the end of the race.”
Carisweather sighed. I looked around again for Glory. She had shot away on foot from the starting position so fast I hadn't seen which way she went. Once we hit the skies I saw her prints on the soft ground. She had always been a good runner when she was a little thing, able to outdistance elk-deer and wrestle them down with her bare hands. She told me she'd been training hard for more than a year to make this the best contest Brakespear had ever seen. I wanted it all to work out for her.
With only suspicions on her part and Aahz's spotting of that mystery figure in the woods it was tough to figure out who to keep a eye on. None of them had a good-conduct prize coming that I could see. Besides Snake-dude trying to mess up the dragons, we'd already spotted the scrawny-butt black-furred nymph scattering slow weed for the other 'hippuses to eat, making sure they'd all be too groggy to run after Glory in the backstretch I knew was up ahead, and both Deveels had tried to make alliances with other riders to let them win.
The noon sun beat down on my back like a hot towel. I wanted to show the colors for Glory, but I'd have been happier in my usual lightweight clothes. A girl my size doesn't need the extra insulation; we generate a fair bit of heat on our own. How she kept moving the way she was amazed me.
If I levitated high above the forest I could see her in the distance, sure-footed as a unicorn. Not the only thing she had in common with that fabled beast, if you get my drift Once in a while when she crested a ridge the others could see her. too. That Prince Bosheer practically bounded out of his saddle-ridge every time he spotted her. That boy had it bad for her. He must have been bitten by the love-bug the second he set eyes on her. I wondered if Glory knew it.
Silly me. She must have known it even before he did. I knew when Hugh fell for me; Crom knows! waited long enough for Mr. Right that I was certain I recognized that look on a man's face when it finally happened. I was seeing it in front of me at this very moment. I started rooting for him to win.
It wasn't going to be easy. The Cosus of Elova had easily the fastest steed, bought directly out of Glory's dad's stables not two weeks ago. The big white 'hippus knew the terrain and didn't have to be magikally adapted to the local atmosphere and gravity as some of the others did. He was in the lead, spurring Sugarpie every time Glory's blond head became visible amid the sparse trees. The others fought for distance, galloping heavily behind him.
The occasional peeks were for the benefit of the riders, she'd told me The dragons were following her own scent plus the spoor she laid down from the brimstone pellets in her belt pouch. One of the big reds suddenly got frustrated with having to thread its way through the trees and let out a blast of fire. With an expression on his big chops I can only call smug, he slithered forward on his belly over the smouldering ashes. The rest of the dragons followed his lead, and the king had a head start on this year's controlled burn. I had a coughing fit as the wind carried clouds of hot cinders up into the sky, so I missed Belizara, a Weeka from Sowen, zoom down on her broom to break up a disagreement between a pair of contestants as to who got precedence to cross a bridge.
Riding alongside but not with the group was the king. He rode a handsome black stallion. Behind him, a litter slung between two beasts carried the prize. No one accompanied him; I mean, who was going to bother the king? Nobody would, especially not a king as well prepared for an attack: Hank was in full armor, carrying a sword, sixteen spears including the famous Broken Spear, a dagger in his belt and each boot, bandoliers of throwing stars, a shield, a mace, and a morning star. So far, everything was running well. With Aahz keeping an eye on the action down below, and me up here, nothing should go wrong.
“You!” I demanded, as Nunzio slunk out of the shadows. “What are you doing here? You ought to be back there keeping an eye on Gleep.”
“He doesn't need me, Aahz,” the Mob enforcer said. “I had to talk to you in private.”
I eyed him. “What's going on that you couldn't ask me back there? Who don't you want to hear you?”
“Massha,” Nunzio sighed, sitting down on a stone and fanning himself with his broad-brimmed hat. “She's queering the whole deal.”