Al Dakar

By Amanda Wray

 

Chapter Five

 

            The knock on Mandine’s door woke her from a dreamless sleep. She rolled over and tried to burrow her head under the pillows and go back to sleep. It was still dark out. Why was Linda trying to get her up so early? “Go away,” she mumbled. Her mouth was very dry and felt like it was full of cotton, and her voice didn’t come out as much more than a croak. Her head was pounding; she wished whoever was knocking would quit it and go away.

            Suddenly her eye fell on the rickety washstand and chipped basin in the corner of the room. She swallowed again, remembering where she was. The knocking on the door had ceased momentarily, and now it began again. “Aleric,” she mumbled. That must be Aleric, trying to wake her up. They had another long day ahead of them, if she remembered what he had told her yesterday. She sat up, and her head spun dizzily, pounding in time to the rapping on the door.

            She put a hand to her head. What was wrong with her? Was she ill? Suddenly she remembered having had too much to drink the night before. Her mood sunk lower. How could she have been so stupid? And now she had to sit in a saddle all day, her head throbbing in time to the horse’s hooves.

            Mandine pulled herself out of bed and hauled the door open, groaning inwardly. Aleric stood there, fully dressed down to the sword he had buckled at his waist. And looking much better rested than Mandine felt. His expression as he took in her state looked stern and disapproving, and also somewhat embarrassed for some reason, but all he said was, “You’d better get dressed, I’m going to go get the horses saddled. We can eat on the way.” And then after a moment, before he turned away, “I tried to give you as much extra time to sleep as I could. I hope you’re feeling alright.” Then he turned and stalked off down the hallway.

            Mandine shut the door again and suddenly caught sight of her reflection in the single, smudged mirror in the room. She groaned audibly this time, squeezed her eyes shut, and then opened them again. And winced. She was wearing the white riding dress she had changed into the night before, with the very ragged and very generous V-neck that she suddenly remembered giving the dress. It was now wrinkled and twisted from being slept in, and she was exposing even more than she had been the night before. No wonder Aleric had looked embarrassed just then, with her standing there practically giving away the farm in that dress.

            It wasn’t until she had discarded the dress in disgust, changed back into her trousers and tunic, and was splashing water on her face, that she remembered something else about the night just passed. Her hands paused, letting cupped water drain out through her fingers as she frowned in concentration. She hadn’t… said anything… to Aleric, had she? A vague memory was trying to push itself through her throbbing head. An image of herself from the previous night, with her arms entwined around Aleric’s neck… And asking him to stay with her? This time her groan was more like a wimper, as color flooded into her cheeks at the remembrance.

            Mandine quickly considered her options, including crawling under the bed and refusing to come out. She discarded that idea straight off; the idea here was to spare herself as much further humiliation as possible, after all. Shoving her feet into her boots with more force than was strictly necessary, she decided that there was nothing she could do except to pretend she had completely forgotten the entire incident. She doubted Aleric would bring it up himself – hoped he would not, anyway -- so all she had to do was avoid the subject of the previous night entirely. She could do that. Now if only she could keep from blushing whenever she looked at him, she thought her act might even be convincing.

 

            Aleric already had their horses ready when Mandine entered the stableyard with her saddlebags slung over one shoulder, minus the weight of a certain white riding dress, which she had left balled up in a corner of her room. When she would have occasion to wear that again, she didn’t know. She made a beeline for Silk, and managed to keep the animal between her and her line of vision to Aleric while she fastened the saddlebags tightly. She didn’t trust herself to be able to meet his gaze without blushing, not yet. “Ready?” was all she said, as she swung herself up into the saddle. Aleric followed suit, and Mandine led the way out of Maragill.

            Satisfied that they had all of a day’s head start on the search party Helena would inevitably be forming, they kept the horses to a brisk walk. It was still a fast pace, but not nearly as grueling as the pace of the day before.

Mandine was very grateful not to be trotting, but even so her head throbbed at every other step, and she carried a waterskin at her pommel that she drank out of every few minutes and was surprised when it turned up empty less than an hour later. Her thirst had begun to slack off though, and after a while she fancied her head hurt a little less also. She could have been imagining the improvement, though.

Aleric kept the pace she set, riding along side her. He spent most of his time peering up ahead of them, or sometimes behind or into the brush on either side of the road, but not really as though he expected to find anything there. Every now and then he cast a glance in her direction also, surely taking in her sorry, hungover state. He sometimes looked as though he might say something, but never did, not even when he leaned over to offer her breakfast, which they ate while riding.

Mandine was beginning to think the silence was rather unnerving, but she didn’t want to be the first to break it. Finally, tired of feeling uncomfortable, she said, “I guess Helena must be in the middle of throwing a fit over us by now, huh.” She felt rather guilty, truthfully, for causing her mother and siblings the worry she undoubtably was causing. She vowed to send word to them as soon as possible, as soon as she reached somewhere where her mother couldn’t drag her back home, anyway. She definitely did not think her mother would even dream of sending soldiers all the way to the Seekers after her. Even if she ordered it done, Mandine thought most of the soldiers would rebel before setting foot in the Mountains of Mist. It was just not a place one went lightly, with any other choice. She supposed Helena might come herself, but the woman by herself would have a hard time getting Mandine to come home if she was not ready to. Mandine considered the possibility some more, and then discarded it. For all her mother’s shows of bravado, she really didn’t think the woman possessed the courage to pay a visit to the Seekers in person, herself.

Aleric managed a small laugh. “Throwing a fit,” he said, “is one thing you must admit your mother does very well.”

Mandine, for all her resolve to avoid looking at Aleric, glanced at him in surprise. She had never known Aleric to experience firsthand the rough side of Helena’s tongue, and she told him so.

He laughed. “No one is immune to Helena’s fury, least of all me. Remember when you broke your arm falling off Red the first time I let you ride him bareback? I don’t think your mother stopped yelling at me for two days, that time, and barely spoke to me for weeks, until it was clear your arm would heal good as new.”

Mandine was surprised anew. She remembered the incident, back when she was thirteen, and she hadn’t even thought Helena had known she’d broken her arm at all. She certainly had said nothing to Mandine, and hadn’t even seemed to notice her splinted arm for the entire six weeks it had taken to heal. Mandine pondered that silently for a while. Helena had always seemed to have a kind of laissez-faire attitude about raising her children, providing discipline and guidance from afar, and often through intermediaries. Until now, Mandine had often equated Helena’s physical aloofness from her children with emotional aloofness as well, but now she considered the possibility that she could be wrong. It gave her another pang of remorse for having left in such a fashion, even though she knew that her mother would never have consented to her going to the Seekers had she sought permission. And somehow Mandine knew that if she didn’t go, her continuing nightmares would be the least of her worries. She couldn’t have said how she knew, precisely, but she was as certain of it as she had ever been of anything.

Aleric seemed to sense her pensive mood. “You are doing what you have to do,” he said. “Sooner or later you knew you’d have to go to them, didn’t you? To find out if they want something of you, to find out what the dreams mean…”

“But what about the price?” It was something she had avoided thinking about until now. The Seekers always demanded a steep price, and it was not always what you were prepared to give. In Mandine’s case, she had not brought anything she thought the Seekers were remotely interested in, anyway. She hoped she got her answer before she had to pay the price. Then maybe she could turn around and run as fast as she could. The image that flashed in her mind was so ridiculous it almost made her chuckle.

Aleric just shook his head, not having anything to offer and not knowing what to say.  They rode in silence a few moments more, though a much more comfortable one, and then Aleric changes the subject and asked, “Are you feeling better? I expect you had quite a hangover this morning.”

Mandine fiddled with putting her empty water canteen back in her saddlebags, giving her a moment to decide how to answer. This was getting into tricky territory. She didn’t want to let on that she remembered anything that had occurred after Aleric had taken her back to her room. What had happened before that was embarrassing enough, but she wasn’t sure she could realistically pretend to have forgotten the entire evening, so all she said was, “Starting to feel better, thank you. I’ll never try that again… Believe me, that wasn’t my intention at all. I had no idea I drank so much.”

She hoped they could leave it at that, but he said, “If I may ask, what exactly was your intention?”

Pretending to be very interested in Silk’s bridle for a time, she said, “I just wanted to be useful… I didn’t want you to be the one doing everything. I thought I could get some information, and…” She plowed ahead, fiddling with the mare’s bridle so much that the animal snorted and tossed her head. This was getting close to a very dangerous subject, indeed. “Well, I thought the men in the common room would pay more attention and answer my questions better if I was… not dressed like a boy,” she finished, feeling herself blush despite all her attempts at avoiding it. “It worked a little better than I wanted it to.” Now she was definitely blushing, even though she hadn’t so much as peeked in Aleric’s direction since their conversation had taken this turn.

Aleric seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “I am sorry if I seemed overprotective last night, telling you you couldn’t go ask about the rumors. I didn’t mean to imply that you couldn’t handle the responsibility, or anything like that. You just don’t have the practical experience that I have is all, and, well, I am not so sure I want you to have it. That kind of experience involves being exposed to danger, and I’m supposed to protect you, after all.” He laughed wryly, though Mandine wasn’t entirely sure what he saw that was funny.

“You do a very good job of protecting me,” Mandine admitted. “But you can’t keep me out of danger my whole life. I am not ten years old any longer,” she added, hoping she only sounded matter-of-fact, and not sullen. She finally shot a peek at him. He looked amused. Amused!

“I’d noticed,” he said wryly.

 

The sun was well overhead and beating down fiercely on Mandine’s bare head when Aleric suggested that they stop to eat and to give the horses some time to rest. They stopped in a secluded area near a pond that was just barely visible through the trees from the road. Mandine slid down from her saddle and took Silk by the bridle. She grabbed Shadow’s bridle also, pausing to let Aleric remove his saddlebags, where he kept their food. Aleric set the saddlebags on the ground and began removing food—he had apparently stocked up at the inn before they left that morning—and Mandine led the horses through the trees to where the lake sparkled in the sun about a hundred spans away.

At the lakeshore the horses bent their heads to drink thirstily, wading a few feet into the gently rippling water. Mandine retrieved hobbles from Silk’s saddlebags, and bent to hobble the animals so that they couldn’t wander far while she and Aleric ate their meal.

Squatting next to Silk, Mandine noticed something in the expanse of mud by the lakeshore, marking where the water level had receded as a result of the drought. There were hoofprints there, a lot of them. Her own horse and Aleric’s had not had time to make so many prints, and neither one had strayed more than a few feet along the side of the lake, being more interested in drinking than in wandering or foraging. It was certainly likely that a caravan of men and horses had stopped here, taking advantage of the ready supply of water, as she was now doing herself. But something made her bend closer, for a longer look at one of the prints. She traced it lightly with one finger, noticing something odd after a moment. The horses that had made these prints had not been wearing horseshoes. That immediately made it unlikely that they were horses that had been used for riding. She thought it very unlikely that it could have been a group of wild horses. It looked too few to be a herd, and she didn’t think that there were any herds of wild horses this close to civilization anyway. She thought the prints could have been made by two or three animals, walking around and foraging by the water’s edge. It also seemed as though they had been made recently, maybe that very morning.

Her attention was brought back to her own horses, who had both lifted their heads from the water and begun testing the air warily with flared nostrils. Silk tossed her head and began to whicker, and Shadow joined in. Both horses had retreated from the water and were eyeing the forest off to Mandine’s left, with eyes wide and ears laid back against their heads. Dropping the hobbles Mandine was still holding in one hand, she straightened slowly from her crouch, peering in the direction the horses’ attention seemed to be fixed on.

Something, or maybe more than one something, seemed to be making its way through the forest, and coming closer. A bear maybe, she thought, her hand tightening automatically on her long-bladed belt knife. Two shapes began to emerge from the forest, silhoutted by the sun. Mandine thought at first they were horses, but larger ones than she had ever seen. Then the animals seemed to catch their scent and turned towards them. Mandine froze, feeling a strong and sudden fear, almost to the point of panic.

The animals that emerged from the forest had the large, sleek black bodies of horses, but the fur turned thick and furry at the shoulders, and where the horses’ heads should have been were instead the heads of huge wolves, with yellow eyes that gleamed from where they peered out of dull black fur. Both animals wore menacing grimaces that bared large, yellowed canine teeth, and low growls rose from their throats as they advanced slowly on Mandine and the horses. Over and above her fear, Mandine was dumbfounded. Even after hearing the rumors, and having the dreams, she had not actually conceived of the possibility that these creatures – these hellhounds—actually existed. The idea that someone must be playing a cruel joke on her kept flashing through her mind.

Silk and Shadow both reared and pawed the air, neighing in fear, and then took off at a run into the forest back the way Mandine had come. She was left alone by the edge of the water, rooted to the spot, watching the animals advance. They kept their eyes on her, not even moving their heads to follow the flight of the frightened horses. Mandine drew her knife, almost laughing at the absurdity of it. She didn’t think a knife could do much at all against one creature that size, much less two. Nevertheless she drew her other knife from her boot top, never taking her eyes off the advancing animals. The sound of her own retreating horses faded into the brush.

Options raced through Mandine’s mind. If she ran, the animals could surely overtake her in seconds. If she waited for them to come to her, she would never get in close enough to use her knives; the animals’ powerful hooves could kill her with a single blow before she ever got her knife in close enough. She would have to throw her knives, and that meant she only had one shot to hit, much less seriously injure, each animal. If she missed or failed to do significant damage to either animal she would be completely defenseless.

She had practiced knife throwing with Aleric, aiming for targets painted on tree trunks. This was totally different, she reflected, hefting her knife and choosing the closest hellhound, still some distance away but advancing inexorably. Tree trunks didn’t move, and they didn’t attack, and they didn’t make you so nervous you could hardly think straight, either.

 She drew back her arm and threw as hard as she could. Amazingly, the knife struck home, jutting out from the chest of one of the creatures, just under the left shoulder. It was close to where Mandine had judged the animal’s heart should be. The animal yelped and staggered to his knees for a moment, but then, amazingly, it regained its feet and began its advance anew. It was coming much more slowly now, but if anything, the hatred that seemed to burn in the animal’s eyes increased.

Mandine shifted her remaining knife from her left hand to her right, wondering if she should aim at the wounded animal again, or the healthy one. If she didn’t throw her other knife soon, she would probably lose the chance to use it entirely. She made up her mind, aimed at the healthy animal, and readied herself to throw.

A knife whizzed through the air from off to Mandine’s left, striking the hellhound before she could loose her own knife. Mandine took her eyes off the creatures long enough to glance in that direction and saw Aleric striding grimly towards the confrontation. Mandine’s emotions at seeing him warred between wanting to shout at him to get away, and relief that he was there, although she wasn’t sure he would be much more effective against these creatures than she herself was.

The hellhound that Aleric’s knife had struck staggered sideways, and then leaped forward with a snarl. Aleric closed the gap between the animal and Mandine in an instant it seemed, even as Mandine threw her second knife as the animal lunged. Her knife struck a glancing blow this time, hitting the animal in the knee and bouncing away, landing at the waters edge. The hellhound buckled, falling forward and then staggering back up again. It was hobbling on three legs now though, and began to retreat uncertainly.

The other hellhound growled deeply and leaped forward, closing the remaining distance between them in one stride. Aleric drew his sword and tried to motion Mandine to get behind him. Mandine was staring at the hellhound, though, transfixed. She still couldn’t believe this was possible, that this was happening at all. How could such creatures exist? Where had they come from?

The hellhound reared, pawing the air with its horse-like hooves, striking at Aleric’s outstretched sword-arm. One of the hooves struck metal, and Aleric’s sword flew from his grasp. Mandine didn’t even know she was retreating until her heel struck a root sticking out of the mud, and she tripped and fell backwards onto the ground. The hellhound loomed over her.

Everything seemed to happen at once. Aleric lunged for his sword, lying a few feet away. The hellhound reared, its hooves ready to come down and smash Mandine’s skull. All she could do was stare at the animal looming over her, and think frantically, This is not real! This is not REAL!

The hellhound seemed to flicker for an instant that seemed almost like Mandine’s imagination, and then it simply vanished.

Mandine scrambled to a sitting position, looking around wildly. Both hellhounds were somehow gone. Numb with shock, she scrambled on all fours to the water’s edge to retrieve the knife that had fallen there, and glanced around wildly, expecting the creatures to reappear at any moment. A rough hand on her arm startled her, and she started to whirl around even as she realized that it was Aleric hauling her to her feet. She had almost forgotten him.

Aleric’s face looked as white and shaken as she supposed she herself must look. He held a knife ready in one hand and gripped her arm firmly in the other, and led her back the way they had come, away from the lake’s edge, all the while nervously trying to look in all directions at once. Neither of them spoke until they were back at the spot where Aleric had left the saddlebags.

“Were they real?” Mandine asked, surprised that her voice did not shake.

Aleric shook his head, still scanning the forest in all directions. “They left hoofprints…. We have to assume that anything solid enough to leave prints and be hurt by our knives is real enough to be a serious danger in return.”

“Then where did they go?” Mandine still clutched her remaining knife, she realized, and had no inclination to put it away. “Why didn’t they stay and…..” kill me, she finished silently, knowing that she had been moments away from certain death.

“I don’t know,” Aleric said grimly. “If they can disappear that easily, we must assume they can appear again just as easily.”

Something about that nagged at Mandine’s mind. “Then why didn’t they appear right on top of me? Why did they come out through the forest like ordinary animals? Have you ever heard anything in stories about hellhounds being able to appear and disappear?”

“No. Are you suggesting someone or something somehow made them disappear?” Aleric was still scanning the forest.

The idea was almost as strange as the hellhounds disappearing of their own will. And of the hellhounds even being there in the first place, Mandine thought ruefully. Suddenly she realized that Aleric was still gripping her arm, and not too gently either. She sheathed her knife and but her free hand on his hand, which was encasing her upper arm. That seemed to break Aleric off from his anxious study of the forest. He released her arm immediately, and sheathed his own knife. “Sorry,” he said as he noticed Mandine trying to surreptitiously get the blood circulating in her arm again.

Mandine waved off his apology. “I don’t suppose you know where we can find the horses?”

“They tore through here and headed for the road,” Aleric said. “That’s how I was warned you were in trouble. I don’t know if we’ll find them. I don’t suppose they could have gone too far,” he said, but he did not sound very certain. He gathered up his saddlebags – Mandine’s were still on Silk, she remembered glumly—and headed for the road.