02 Unicorn Rider (12 page)

‘Captain,’ he said, backing away from the window. ‘Captain. There are more of them out there. We need another plan.’

There was scrabbling and scratching and pecking up on the roof, and bits of ceiling started to fall. The men gripped their swords and prepared for the worst.

***

Strata washed up the plates and cups from supper, dried them, and put them away neatly. She walked through to the living room, running her finger along every piece of furniture as she went and checking for dust. Everything was spotlessly clean.

Too clean.

Even the fireplace was clean.

She went back to the kitchen. She had swept the floor that morning.

Everything was clean.

She took a seat at the kitchen table and laid her hands out in front of her. They were trembling. She clenched her fingers, but the trembling wouldn’t stop.

A teardrop rolled down her face.

She stood quickly, grabbing a wash cloth and using it to wipe down every surface in the kitchen. She had to keep working. Keep busy.

She couldn’t stop to think about what was happening to her family.

She wasn’t going to cry.

A small noise from Glass’s room attracted her attention.

‘Glass?’ she called, hardly daring to hope that her daughter was awake again. ‘Are you okay?’

There was no answer, so she went through to the back of the house.

Glass’s room seemed cold. The curtains flapped restlessly, and two small pixie–lights danced over the foot of the bed, creating figure–of–eight patterns.

Strata shooed out the pixies and pulled the shutter closed, feeling immediately safer for having a barrier between her and the uncontrollable night.

She walked over to the bed and pulled back the blankets. At once she was seized with a violent horror, and she fell against the wall, shaking uncontrollably as new tears filled her disbelieving eyes.

The bed was empty.

Glass was gone.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Sky woke long before her father did, and made sure she had prepared breakfast for him before leaving the house.

As she had expected, he had come back late last night, smelling of ale and singing the songs he had been singing with his friends at the tavern. He had ungratefully turned his nose up at the supper she had cooked, and had fallen asleep in the chair by the fire she had made up for him.

He was still snoring loudly in that chair as she put on water for tea and made a bowl of fresh porridge. Sometimes he would make a strange whimpering noise as a result of some terrible dream thing that was happening to him, and he would fling an arm out wildly with clutching fingers. It was almost as if, in his sleeping state, he was reaching out to grab a fleeting memory of the woman who had left him all those years before. Perhaps it was even an attempt to drag her back into his waking life.

Sky sighed as the kettle finished boiling. She never dreamed about her mother. If she did, she would probably dream about dragging her home too. Not because it would make her father happy, but because her mother’s return would be the only thing that would enable Sky to have a life of her own. She loved her father, even if he was an ungrateful pig; and the big lummox would never survive without her. He was already drinking too much. If Sky went, then there would be nothing left holding him together.

She ladled porridge into a big bowl, and set it on the table close to his feebly grasping hand. She doubted he would be awake before the porridge went cold.

By the time she finally left the house, the sun was already high above the spikes of the distant mountains, creating shadows like scars across the land. She went straight to Nimbus’s house without meeting anybody on the way, and if she hadn’t been so preoccupied with thoughts of her father she might have thought that was strange.

If she hadn’t been so preoccupied, she might also have seen the wyvern sitting on the roof of the garrison, or any of the five other wyverns sitting at various points throughout the village.

She knocked on Nimbus’s front door, and waited patiently for an answer. Nothing.

She knocked again.

She started to become vaguely aware that there was no birdsong. The morning seemed almost supernaturally quiet.

She didn’t knock a third time. She opened the door and went in.

Strata was sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the wall. There was a mug of cold tea by her right hand, and dark circles under her eyes.

Sky shut the door, and cleared her throat awkwardly. ‘Strata?’ she said.

Strata blinked, and looked up. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Sky. Hello. I didn’t hear you knocking.’

‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to just walk in, but I really wanted to see Nim before he set off on another one of his adventures. I don’t suppose he’s around, is he?’

Strata shook her head sadly. Her hands were bunched into useless fists. ‘He’s gone.’

‘Gone where?’

‘To Mother’s temple. Looking for answers.’

Sky’s stomach sank. ‘But I didn’t even get to speak to him.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Why did he have to go to the temple? Why didn’t he wait to see me or Tidal before he went?’

‘Something’s happened to Glass. Something to do with the magic. It’s killing her.’

All of the strength went out of Sky’s legs, and she had to quickly sit down just in case she fell over. ‘That’s not possible.’

‘That’s what I keep telling myself, but it’s happening just the same. We were visited by a banshee last night. They scream outside the window of a human doomed to die.’

‘I never heard anything.’

‘You wouldn’t have. The scream of a banshee can only be heard by the dead, and those who are soon to join them.’

‘And Glass heard the scream?’

‘We believe so, yes.’

‘She must be terrified. Can I see her?’

Strata’s bottom lip trembled, and her eyes glistened wetly. She tried to remain composed when she spoke, but her pain sounded in every syllable of every word. ‘She’s gone too.’

‘With Nimbus?’

‘I don’t know. I went in to her last night, after Nimbus had already left, and... She wasn’t there. I was going to go looking for her, but I didn’t know where to start, and I didn’t want Nimbus to come back to find the house empty. He wouldn’t have...’ Strata choked on a sob, and wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. She couldn’t go on.

Sky twisted a loop of her hair around one finger nervously. ‘What are we going to do?’

Strata shook her head. ‘Glass is a magic user. She could be anywhere by now. We’ll never find her.’

‘Aren’t you even going to try?’

‘I don’t know what to do,’ Strata snapped, then she turned away, burying her face in her hands. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she repeated quietly. ‘My son has become a hero. My daughter has become a thing of such magical strength, I fear her almost as much as I love her. My husband is more of a mystery with every passing day. What am I to do? How am I supposed to help? I’m just human.’

Sky was sure that if she was older, she would have had some answers for Strata, but as it was, she simply sat quietly at the kitchen table, watching the sunlight streaming through the window, and wishing she had something comforting to say.

Then the screeching started.

***

Although he didn’t know it, Hawk woke at exactly the same time as Sky. However, unlike Sky, who had taken the time to make breakfast, Hawk went straight about the business of stuffing his few meagre possessions into a sack, ready for his departure from the village. He wanted Landmark to be far behind him long before anybody noticed he was gone, so the sooner he went the better.

As he threw his spare clothes together, and slung his bow over one shoulder, he thought about the people he had lived with over the last two months: the people who had become his friends.

Most of all he thought about Sky.

Secretly – and he would never admit as much to her – he thought Sky was really quite pretty. During his time in the village he had often considered asking her on a picnic, but he was regarded as a coward, and Sky was friends with a Wing Warrior. There was no way she would be interested in him.

He felt his ears getting hot with anger, and he was sure he must have been blushing furiously as he took his quiver of arrows and headed downstairs.

Even the landlord was not up yet, so Hawk left payment for his room on the bar. He was probably paying more than his bill had come to, but it was worth it to leave without any heavy–handed questioning from the landlord and the other guests, who were all far more interested in Hawk than he wanted them to be.

Having settled his bill, he went through into the kitchen and wrapped up a half–loaf of bread and some cured ham.

It was while he was in the deserted kitchen, searching through the cupboards for anything else that he could easily take with him on his journey, that he suddenly became aware of just how quiet it really was.

He put down his recently acquired stash of food and went to the window. Two men in silver armour and black capes were standing in the street. They were totally motionless, almost as if they were suits of armour with no living thing inside. Crouched beside them, making evil gulping noises and occasionally twitching its gargantuan wings, was one of the foul, green monsters that had attacked the village the previous day.

Hawk gasped and ducked out of sight. Staying low to the ground, he scrambled through to the main bar, and took a look out of one of the windows in there. He could just make out the roof of the garrison building, on which was perched another wyvern. Here and there among the houses he could see glints of sunlight on silver armour.

‘What’s going on?’ he whispered, taking the bow from his shoulder. He slumped down as low as he could beneath the window. His heart was thumping so loudly he was sure every wyvern for miles around would be able to hear it.

There was the clink of metal on metal. One of the soldiers was moving on the other side of the window.

But moving where?

‘Stay calm,’ Hawk said to himself. ‘Now is not the time to panic. They don’t know you’re here.’

The soldier’s footsteps were drawing nearer, and now Hawk could hear the jingling of chainmail, the awkward clatter of metal plates, and a gurgling, rasping sound that reminded him of the time his friend Clay had got a chicken bone stuck in his throat.

‘They don’t know you’re here,’ he whispered. ‘They didn’t see you.’

The footsteps stopped.

Did they?

There was a horrible scuttling sound, and the shadow of a monstrous crawling thing fell over the window.

Hawk sprang into motion with a yelp, all thoughts of staying calm driven from his mind.

He dashed into the kitchen, and then went out the back door into the alley. Just around the corner he could hear the gulping sound of the wyvern, and then there was another burst of that menacing scuttling. Hawk just caught sight of a dark shape sliding out of view over the roof of one of the nearby houses.

He pressed himself against the wall and started to creep along the alley. When he reached the far corner of the inn, he peered around into the side street. There was no sign of any threat, so he edged forwards.

At the next corner he paused again. His hands were shaking so badly he knew that the bow in his hand was worse than useless. If it came down to a fight he wouldn’t be able to get off a single shot before he was torn to pieces.

He crouched and tried to calm himself by using some breathing exercises Sky had taught him to combat his fear of Cumulo. After about a minute he realised it was going to take more than that to stop him shaking. He had to get out of the village.

He looked around the corner of the inn. There was a wyvern hunched at either end of the main road running through Landmark, and at least a dozen silver soldiers.

Hawk realised with a heart–crushing certainty that he was never going to get out of the village this way. He also realised, just a fraction too late, that there was someone standing behind him.

A yelp of surprise was choked in his throat as a strong hand clamped over his mouth. Another hand snapped over his arm as he reached to grab an arrow from his quiver.

‘Shut up,’ Tidal said. ‘Calm down. You’re going to get us killed.’

Recognition dawned in Hawk’s eyes and he relaxed. Tidal let go, and sat back in the shadow of the wall.

‘You scared the life out of me,’ Hawk said.

‘Everything scares the life out of you.’

‘There’s no time for cruel remarks, Tide. Have you seen those things?’

‘I’ve been watching them most of the night.’

‘What are they doing?’

‘By the looks of it, they’re invading. They took out the night watchmen, and they’ve got the rest of the garrison trapped. Since then they’ve just been standing around, like they’re waiting for something.’

 ‘And where’s Lord Nimbus? Why hasn’t he put a stop to this?’

‘I saw Cumulo flying away from the village just moments before these things arrived. He probably saw them coming and thought he would get out of here while he could.’

‘So Nimbus and the dragon are gone, and the garrison are trapped. What do we do now?’

Tidal noticed Hawk’s sack of clothes. ‘Well, from the looks of it, you’re going to run off again. That leaves me to save the village.’

‘How do you intend to do that?’

‘Quiet. I’m thinking.’

‘You’re crazy. You aren’t going to be able to take on that many wyverns.’

‘Maybe not, but if I can help the garrison, maybe I can round up enough people to frighten them away. First off though, I need to make sure somebody’s okay.’

‘Who?’

Tidal indicated a house farther up the road. ‘That’s Sky’s house.’

‘You’ll never reach it.’

‘Maybe not on foot. Follow me.’

Bent almost double to make himself as small as possible, Tidal ran back up the side street and then down the alley. He stopped at the next corner to catch his breath.

‘Be careful,’ Hawk hissed. ‘There’s more around there. I saw them from the kitchen window.’

Tidal listened intently, and eventually heard the flutter of a wyvern’s wings. There was also a much less familiar, scuttling noise coming from somewhere above and beyond the next house. ‘This inn has a stable just down here,’ he said. ‘If I can reach it, get a horse, I might be able to make it to Sky’s house before one of those monsters gets me.’