Wolf Captured (2 page)

Derian rubbed his face with his hands again, trying to waken a memory of any of this, but there was none. He must have been well and truly drunk—or drugged.

“And you came?” he said, hearing the disbelief in his own voice. “You came?”

“We come,” the husky voice replied. “They would do what they say, and though after we kill them all there would be no saving you. And I remember what you tell me when first I come from my pack—how Earl Kestrel use Blind Seer to make me do as he wish—and I think these men know that trick, too, and if not you, then maybe Elise or Doc or some other. I would not buy my running free for your blood.”

“Horse …” Derian swore softly. He understood Firekeeper’s reasoning, but it angered him to have been the hostage used to force her actions. She had come to him without any ties, unable to understand the concept of hostages until he had explained it. Now she was bound, and he hated being one of the ropes that bound her.

Firekeeper seemed to sense his anger, but misunderstood it. Her rough voice was almost tender when she next spoke.

“I think they want you for you,” she said, “not just to use me. I hear them call you my keeper, and I think it good if they think this.”

Derian nodded.

“Firekeeper,” he said softly. “Do you think we can get away?”

“I not know,” came the frank reply. “But I know no one of mine will look for us.”

Derian’s memory was returning now with such dismaying clarity that he almost wished for the headache to dominate again.

“No,” he said, forcing the words. “We were leaving tomorrow morning, first west, then on a buying trip. No one will miss me for a moonspan or more, and even then they’ll just think I was delayed.”

He cursed the ill luck that made this possible. How many other people could travel through isolated areas so completely alone? He might be the only man in Hawk Haven who could—and that was because Firekeeper would be with him.

King Tedric had wanted them to take a look at the new fortifications going up in the gap in the Iron Mountains—to make the kind of report only they could manage, for Firekeeper could ask her people if the measures were acceptable, while Derian could explain more clearly than anyone else just what was going on.

Most expeditions of this sort would involve pack trains and armed guards. The one Earl Kestrel had led two years before had done so. However, horses and mules were less than relaxed around Firekeeper and Blind Seer, so if she was to be involved, the fewer pack animals they used the better. Derian had access to a handful of horses and mules that had learned to tolerate the wolves, and after very little discussion had convinced the king to let them travel alone.

Derian suspected that Tedric had been easily convinced because the two of them arriving without fuss could more easily inspect—“spy upon” was a more honest term—the garrison before the garrison put on its best manners for the counselor of the king.

Derian felt a guarded flicker of hope.

“Firekeeper, we may be missed. True, we’d already said our good-byes, but there’s Roanne and my pack horse, my camping gear, too. I left them west of Eagle’s Nest.”

Usually, he would have stabled at his parents’ facilities, but Prancing Steed Stables was filled to overflowing. Its buildings were mostly grouped to the east of the city, and Derian hadn’t wanted to guide Roanne and the pack horse through the streets that would be crowded with departing festivalgoers the next morning.

Far easier to move them the day before, taking them to a farm owned by friends of the Carter family who were more than happy to offer space in a back pasture.

“I forget this,” Firekeeper said, and Derian was absurdly pleased to hear relief in her voice. “Then someone see we not take them and ask questions. Did any see you leave dancing?”

Derian shook his head, regretted the motion, and massaged his temples as he answered.

“Lots of people, but no one in particular. There was a young woman …”

Firekeeper snorted again, the soft gust mingled exasperation and amusement. She seemed immune to sexual impulses, even though regular nourishment had filled her once slat-sided figure into small rounded breasts and gently curving hips. It wasn’t a matter Derian felt comfortable discussing with anyone. He grew pink even thinking about it.

Doc, Earl Kestrel’s cousin, was less shy—at least where Firekeeper was concerned—and had once commented that prolonged starvation might have slowed Firekeeper’s development. Sometimes, though, Derian wondered if there was something more involved, if Firekeeper really didn’t think of herself as human and so human sexual impulses—and the things they led humans to do—really were alien to her.

Certainly, while the wolf-woman understood perfectly well why his mention of a young woman meant that Derian hadn’t been anxious to draw attention to his departure, Firekeeper did not understand at all why he should be so eager to be alone with that same young woman.

Firekeeper snorted again, more laughter in the sound this time.

“You not the only one who want to be alone together,” she said. “There were many leaving the dancing with that scent about them. But this not help us, only tell us that if there is help, we must make it.”

Derian couldn’t but agree.

ALTHOUGH SHE DIDN’T WANT TO say anything to Derian, Firekeeper was very worried—and worry was not an emotion with which she was at all comfortable.

Firekeeper was accustomed to the urgency of a hunt. Indeed, Derian had called her obsessive and irresponsible when she was after something. She preferred to think of herself as undistracted.

Humans were so good at worrying about what might happen that often they did nothing rather than risk a wrong action. Firekeeper never forgot what she was after and went directly for it. At least that was how Firekeeper preferred to think of herself, lightly dismissing the times she had worried about the consequences of her actions but acted nonetheless.

Now, trapped in a metal-barred cage in a smelly boat heading who knew where, she was worried. To make matters worse, all of these worries conspired to keep her from doing what she wanted to do, which was break out of the cage—if possible—and get out of this boat. She’d rather take her risks with the river than with these strangers.

However, there was no way she could do this. Derian had lapsed back into semiconsciousness, before, she thought, he realized just how serious their situation was. For one thing, he hadn’t seemed to register that they were aboard a boat, and that the boat was moving. She had little idea of how swiftly they were traveling, but the sound of water against the sides suggested a fair amount of speed.

The Flin River was in spate, channeling runoff from the spring snowmelt, and the current was swift. It did not take an experienced sailor to realize that they were probably moving far more rapidly than anything ashore. Moreover, no one would notice one more boat among so many. Spring brought a return to river traffic, and with a new season nothing would be unusual—or rather, everything would be. Moons would wax and wane before the riverside dwellers would register which boats ran usual routes and so notice those that did not.

To make matters worse, she had no idea where they were headed. Maps were something Firekeeper understood, though she tended to struggle a bit with them. She had seen maps of the local waterways, rivers drawn as bright blue curves that to her eyes bore little resemblance to the broad, powerful reality. From Eagle’s Nest, the capital city of Hawk Haven, the Flin ran southeast before encountering the Barren River. The Barren river then continued northeast before emptying into the ocean at Hawk Haven’s one harbor, Port Haven.

Then we are being taken
, she thought,
either to Bright Bay or to the ocean
.

But this train of thought led her to no constructive conclusions about their captors. Bright Bay was officially friendly to Hawk Haven, but unlike in a wolf pack there were those who grumbled about the rulers, even when those rulers led strongly. She had heard few complaints about King Allister of the Pledge from those who had come from Bright Bay to celebrate the birth of his grandson, but then she would not have. She was known as Allister’s friend, and in any case his enemies would not have made the long journey to celebrate the child’s birth.

What if the boat was carrying them out onto the ocean? Firekeeper had seen the ocean, understood that somewhere across impossibly vast stretches of water were the Isles where Queen Valora—no friend to Firekeeper or those she valued—ruled. Firekeeper understood, too, that humans used the ocean as deer might a forest trail. Reaching the ocean might not be journey’s end, but rather journey’s beginning.

No. Thinking where they were going was useless. Only humans spent time planning hunts when the game had yet to be sighted. She would concentrate on what she did know.

That forced her to face uncomfortable facts she had been avoiding—that Blind Seer was sleeping very deeply, showing no sign of waking. The wolf’s breathing was steady and regular. Indeed, whereas Derian had vomited as he was waking, Blind Seer showed no distress at all. Although it should have reassured her, that lack of distress bothered Firekeeper. Were their captors using some sort of magic to keep the wolf asleep? In the past she had witnessed the use of magics both great and small, but although the possibility of magic being used against them was disturbing, there was another possibility that bothered her even more.

There had been one among their captors, a slim, dark man with the highest cheekbones she had ever seen, who had made Firekeeper very uneasy. He had seemed unusually … She struggled to find the right word for the man’s attitude. “Comfortable” didn’t quite cover the idea, neither did “matter of fact,” but there had been something of both in the man’s actions as he gave orders. This bothered her. She had yet to meet any human whose initial encounter with Blind Seer had not been colored by fear. They might not show it, but Firekeeper knew the signs, knew the scent.

This man had not been afraid. Cautious, yes, but not afraid. He had emerged from inside the boat after Firekeeper and Blind Seer had come aboard. He had been the one who had measured out the drinks for her and Blind Seer.

The wolf’s had been poured into a bowl of beef stock and set down on the deck. Firekeeper had been told to make certain Blind Seer drank it all before she drank her own. The man had watched with something of the same manner she had seen about Doc when the physician was dosing one of his patients—an air of analytical curiosity.

But no fear. No doubt. He had acted as if he knew what he was doing and had no question that what he planned would work. Was this merely confidence or was it something else?

It was a question Firekeeper knew she would not ask, even if opportunity presented itself. From the little she had overheard before the drug took her into sleep, she gathered that their captors might not be aware how clever she had become in understanding human ways. Best that they continue to think so. It might provide her a means of escape.

As much as Firekeeper disliked the possibility that magic had been used against them, she dreaded more the confidence she had perceived in the dark man. It had not been without cause. She had slept. Blind Seer still slept. Derian had slept, and though he had awakened sick, this could be because of the other things he had drunk earlier in the evening’s entertainment rather than from whatever the dark man had done.

The dark man had reason for his confidence, and Firekeeper was wise enough to dread that confidence—and to wonder at its source.

Firekeeper had a wolf’s patience when necessary, but she also had a wild animal’s aversion to being trapped. Just because she couldn’t see any way to escape now didn’t mean she didn’t want to be prepared in case the opportunity presented itself.

The square cage in which she was held was generously proportioned—if you were feeling charitable. She could lie down fully stretched out, even stand without stooping. The base and top were wood, the bars iron. A faint odor clung to the floor, but it wasn’t one she could place. She’d ask Blind Seer about it when he woke. Compared with the wolf, she was nose-dead, just as compared with most humans she was astonishingly sensitive.

The reminder of her companions’ drugged state gave a fresh urgency to her desire to break free. One by one she tested the bars. Each was solid in itself, but a few moved promisingly within the sockets that held them in the wood. If she had her Fang, she could have enlarged the hole, but the knife, along with the small pouch in which she carried flint and steel, had been taken from her.

She patted herself down to see what remained to her. She wore a long-sleeved cotton dress, certainly soiled by now. Originally, it had been pale blue with red trim, the colors of House Kestrel, the Great House into which she had been adopted. She had refused the matching slippers, but accepted a strand of coordinated glass beads. These had gone the way of her knife. The little cap that had started the evening pinned to her hair had been missing long before she’d been lured from the dancing.

Not much to work with. She was wondering if Derian had been as thoroughly disarmed when she heard footsteps on the deck directly above. These stopped and a moment later a square of light appeared off to one side. Almost as soon as it appeared, it was occluded by the shape of a man climbing down the angled steps of a ladder. He was followed by an arm that handed down a lantern, and then the owner of the arm also climbed down. Finally, a third man descended. With a chill, Firekeeper recognized the dark man.

Blind Seer and Derian were well and truly out of it, and she decided it would be to her advantage to appear at least somewhat disoriented. She debated pretending unconsciousness, but decided against that immediately. Although she had been doing her best to ignore it, she was very thirsty, and if the men did not offer her water, she must ask.

Another advantage of not pretending to be asleep was that she could see everything they did. So when the circle of lantern light came over by the cages Firekeeper was sitting up, her arms wrapped around her knees, her chin resting on her folded arms.