“Come on,” Ben said. “I just hope she’s found the right scent.” “Of course she has! Look!”
She pointed, and Ben was just able to make out long, shallow tracks in the snow. Even in the dark Ben and Naomi knew the tracks for what they were-snowshoes.
Frisky barked again.
“Let’s hurry,” Ben said.
By midnight, as they began to draw close to the King’s Preserves, Naomi began to regret the crack she’d made about how she could go on a hundred koner from the place where Ben dropped dead, because she had begun to feel as if that might soon happen to her.
Dennis had made the trip in better time, but Dennis had set out after four days of rest, Dennis had had snowshoes, and Dennis had not been following a dog who sometimes lost the scent and had to cast about for it again. Naomi’s legs felt hot and rubbery. Her lungs burned. There was a stitch in her left side. She had taken a few mouthfuls of snow, but they could not slake her raging thirst.
Frisky, who was not burdened by a pack and who could run lightly along the snow crust, was not tired at all. Naomi was able to walk on the crust for short distances, but then she would strike a rotten spot and plunge through the crust into soft snow up to her knees… and on several occasions, up to her hips. Once she plunged in waist-deep and floundered about in a tired fury until Ben worked his way over and pulled her out.
“Wish… sled,” she panted now.
“… wishes… horses… beggars’d ride,” he panted back, grinning in spite of his own weariness.
“Funny,” she gasped. “Ha-ha. Ought to be a court jester, Ben Staad.”
“King’s Preserves up there. Less snow… easier.”
He bent over, hands on his knees, and gasped for breath. Naomi suddenly felt that she had been selfish and unkind, thinking about how she herself felt, when Ben must be even closer to the point of exhaustion-he was much heavier than she, especially with the weight of the larger pack he carried added into the bargain. He had been breaking through the snow crust on almost every step, leaping through the long fields like a man running in deep water, and yet he had not complained or slowed.
“Ben, are you all right?”
“No,” he wheezed and grinned. “But I’ll make it, pretty child.”
“I am not a child!” she said angrily.
“But you are pretty,” he said, and put his thumb to the tip of his nose. He wiggled his fingers at her.
“Oh, I’ll get you for that-”
“Later,” he panted. “Race you to the woods. Come on.”
So they raced, with Frisky chasing along the scent ahead of them, and he beat her, and that made her madder than ever… but she admired him, too.
104
Now they stood looking across the seventy koner of open ground between the edge of the forest where King Roland had once slain a dragon and the walls of the castle where he had been slain himself. A few more snowflakes skirled down from the sky… and a few more… and suddenly, magically, the air was filled with snow.
In spite of his weariness, Ben felt a moment of peace and joy. He looked at Naomi and smiled. She tried a scowl but it wouldn’t fit her face and so she smiled, too. A moment later, she ran her tongue out and tried to catch a flake of snow. Ben laughed quietly.
“How did he get inside, if he did?” Naomi asked.
“I don’t know,” Ben said. He had grown up on a farm, and knew nothing of the castle’s sewer system. Probably every bit as well for him, you might say, and you would be right. “Perhaps your champion dog can show us how he did it.”
“You really think he did, don’t you, Ben?”
“Oh, aye,” Ben said. “What do you think, Frisky?”
At the sound of her name, Frisky got up, ranged along the scent for a few feet, and looked back at them.
Naomi looked at Ben. Ben shook his head.
“Not yet,” he said.
Naomi called Frisky softly, and she came back, whining.
“If she could talk, she’d tell you she’s afraid of losing the scent. The snow will cover it.”
“We’ll not wait long. Dennis had the snowshoes, but we’re going to have something he didn’t, Naomi.”
“What’s that?”
“Cover.”
105
In spite of Frisky’s growing restlessness at being checked on the scent, Ben made them wait fifteen minutes. By then the air had become a shifting cloud of white. Snow frosted Naomi’s brown hair and his own blond hair; Frisky wore a cold ermine stole. They could no longer see the castle walls ahead of them.
“All right,” Ben said softly, “let’s go.”
They crossed the open ground behind Frisky. The big husky moved slowly now, her nose constantly at the snow, puffing it up every now and again in cold little bursts. The bright-blue runner of scent was dimming, being covered by the white no smell stuff from the sky.
“We may have waited too long,” Naomi said quietly beside him.
Ben said nothing. He knew it, and the knowledge gnawed at his heart like a rat.
Now a dark bulk loomed out of the whiteness-the castle wall. Naomi had moved slightly ahead. Ben reached out and grabbed her arm. “The moat,” he said. “Don’t forget that. It’s up here somewhere. You’ll go over the side and land on the ice and break your ne-”
He got just so far and then Naomi’s eyes blazed with alarm. She pulled out of his grip. “Frisky!” she hissed. “Hai! Frisky! Danger! Drop-off! “She darted after the dog.
That girl is absolutely giddy bonkers, Ben thought with a certain admiration. Then he darted after her.
Naomi needn’t have worried. Frisky had stopped at the edge of the moat. Her nose was buried in the snow and her tail was wagging happily. Now she bit down on something and dragged it out of the loose powder. She turned to Naomi, eyes asking: Now am I a good dog, or what? What do you think?
Naomi laughed and hugged her dog.
Ben glanced toward the castle wall. “Hush!” he whispered at her. “If the guards hear you, we’re in the slate-cracker for sure! Where do you think we are? Your back garden?”
“Pooh! If they heard anything, they’d think it was snow sprites and run for their mommies.” But she whispered, too. Then she buried her face in Frisky’s fur and told her again what a good dog she was.
Ben scratched Frisky’s head. Because of the snow, neither of them had the horribly exposed sense Dennis had had when he had sat in the same place, taking off the snowshoes Frisky had now found.
“Nose of the gods, all right,” Ben said. “But what happened after he took off the snowshoes, Frisky? Did he grow wings and fly over West'rd Redan? Where did he go from here?”
As if in answer, Frisky broke away from both of them and went floundering and slipping down the steep bank to the frozen moat.
“Frisky!” Naomi called, her voice low but alarmed.
Frisky only stood on the ice looking up at them, hock-deep in new snow. Her tail was wagging slightly, and her eyes begged them to come. She did not bark; somehow she knew better, even though Naomi had not thought to warn her to silence. But she barked in her mind. The scent was still here, and she wanted to follow it before it disappeared completely, as it now would within minutes.
Naomi looked questioningly at Ben.
“Yes,” he said. “Of course. We have to. Come on. But keep her to heel-don’t let her range ahead. There’s danger here. I feel it.”
He held out his hand. Naomi grasped it, and they slid down to the moat together.
Frisky led them slowly across the ice toward the castle wall. She was now actually digging for the scent, her nose furrowing the snow. It had begun to be overlaid with a thick, unpleasant smell-dirty, warm water, garbage, ordure.