A little late for hide and seek, isn't it, Dennis? Flagg would say, and although his grin would widen, his eyes would burn a baleful, hellish red. What have you lost? Can I help you find it?
Don't think his name! For the gods' sake, don't think his name!
But it was hard to stop. Where was it? Oh, where was it?
Back and forth Dennis crawled, his hands now as numb as his feet. Back and forth, back and forth. Where was it? Bad enough if he was unable to find it. Worse still if the snow held off until morning light and someone else did. Gods knew what it might say.
Dimly, he heard the Crier call one o' the clock. He was now covering ground he had already covered before, becoming more and more panicky.
Stop, Dennis. Stop, boy.
His da's voice, too clear in his head to be mistaken. Dennis had been on his hands and knees, his nose almost on the ground. Now he straightened up a little.
You're not SEEING anything anymore, boy. Stop and close your eyes for a moment. And when you open 'em, look around. Really look around.
Dennis closed his eyes tight and then opened them wide. This time, he looked around almost casually, scanning the whole snowy, tracked area around the foot of the Needle.
Nothing. Nothing at--
Wait! There! Over there!
Something glimmered.
Dennis saw a curve of metal, barely poking half an inch out of the snow. Beside it, he could see a round track made by one of his knees--he had almost crawled over the thing during his frantic hunt.
He tried to pluck it from the snow and on his first try only pushed it farther in. His hand was almost too numb to close. Digging in the snow for the metal object, Dennis realized that if his knee had come down on it instead of beside it, he would have driven it more deeply into the snow without even feeling it--his knees were as numb as the rest of him. And then he never would have seen it at all. It would have remained buried until the spring thaws.
He touched it, forced his fingers to close, and brought it out. He looked at it wonderingly. It was a tocket--a locket which might be gold, in the shape of a heart. There was a fine chain attached to it. The locket was shut--but caught in its jaws was a folded piece of paper. Very old paper.
Dennis pulled the note free, closed his hand gently over the old paper, and slipped the locket's chain over his head. He got creakily to his feet and ran back toward the shadows. That run was, in a way, the worst part of the whole business for him. He had never felt so exposed in his whole life. For every step he ran, the comforting shadows of the buildings on the far side of the Plaza seemed to recede a step.
At last he reached comparative safety and stood in the shadows for a while, panting and shuddering. When he had gotten his breath, he returned to the castle, slinking along the Fourth Alley in the shadows and entering by Cook's Way. There was a Guard of the Watch at the doorway leading into the castle proper, but he was as sloppy about his duties as his mate had been the night before. Dennis waited, and eventually the guard wandered off. Dennis darted inside.
Twenty minutes later, he was safely back in the storeroom of the napkins. Here he unfolded the note and looked at it.
One side was closely writ in an archaic hand. The writer had used a strange rust-colored ink and Dennis could make nothing of it. He turned the note over and his eyes widened. He recognized the "ink" that had been used to write the short message on this side easily enough.
"Oh, King Peter," he moaned.
The message was smeared and blurry--the "ink" had not been blotted--but he could read it.
Meant to try Escape tonight. Will wait 1 night. Dare wait no longer. Don't go for Ben. No time. Too dangerous. I have a Rope. Thin. May break. Too short. Will be a drop in any case. 20 feet. Midnight tomorrow. Help me away if you can. Safe place. May be hurt. In the hands of the gods. I love you my good Dennis. King Peter.
Dennis read this note three times and then burst into tears--tears of joy. That light Peyna had sensed was now shining brightly in Dennis's own heart. That was well, and soon all would be well.
His eyes returned again and again to the tine I love you my good Dennis, written in the King's own blood. He had not needed to add that for the message to make sense . . . and yet, he had.
Peter, I would die a thousand deaths for you, Dennis thought. He put the note inside his jerkin, and lay down with the locket still around his neck. It was a very long time before sleep found him this time. And he had not slept long before he snapped wide awake. The door of the storeroom was opening--the low creak of its hinges seemed an inhuman shriek to Dennis. Before his sleep-fuddled mind even had time to realize he had been found, a dark shadow with burning eyes swept down on him.
103
The snow began at around three o' the clock that Monday morning--Ben Staad saw the first flakes go skating past his eyes as he and Naomi stood at the edge of the King's Preserves, looking out toward the castle. Frisky sat on her haunches, panting. The humans were tired, and Frisky was tired as well, but she was eager to go--the scent had grown steadily fresher.
She had led them easily from Peyna's farm to the deserted house where Dennis had spent some four days, eating raw potatoes and thinking sour thoughts about turnips which turned out to be as sour as the thoughts themselves. In that empty Inner Baronies farmstead, the bright-blue scent she had followed this far had been everywhere--she had barked excitedly, running from room to room, nose down, tail wagging cheerfully.
"Look," Naomi said. "Our Dennis burnt something here." She was pointing at the fireplace.
Ben came and looked, but he could make out nothing--there were only bundles of ash which fell apart when he poked at them. Of course, they were Dennis's early tries at his note.
"Now what?" Naomi asked. "He went to the castle from here, that's clear. The question is, do we follow or spend the night here?"
It had then been six o'clock. Outside it was already dark.
"I think we had better go on," Ben said slowly. "After all, it was you who said we wanted Frisky's nose, not her eyes . . . and I, for one, would testify before the throne of any King in creation that Frisky has a noble nose."
Frisky, sitting in the doorway, barked as if to say she knew it.
"All right," Naomi said.
He looked at her closely. It had been a long run from the camp of the exiles, with little rest for either of them. He knew they should stay . . . but he was nearly frantic with urgency.
"Can you go on?" he asked. "Don't say you can if you can't, Naomi Reechul"
She put her hands on her hips and looked at him haughtily. "I could go on a hundred koner from the place where you dropped dead, Ben Staad."
Ben grinned. "You may get your chance to prove it, too," he said. "But first we'll have a bite to eat."
They ate quickly. When the meal was finished, Naomi knelt by Frisky and quietly told her that she must take up the scent again. Frisky didn't have to be asked twice. The three of them quit the farmhouse, Ben with a large pack on his back, Naomi with one only slightly smaller.
To Frisky, Dennis's scent was a blue mark in the night, as bright as a wire glowing with an electric charge. She began to follow at once, and was confused when THE GIRL called her back. Then it came to her; if Frisky had been human, she would have slapped her forehead and groaned. In her impatience to be off, she had started sniffing up Dennis's backtrail. By midnight she would have had them back at Peyna's farmhouse.
"That's all right, Frisky," Naomi said. "Take your time."
"Sure," Ben said. "Take a week or two, Frisky. Take a month, if you want."
Naomi cast a sour glance Ben's way. Ben shut up--prudently, perhaps. The two of them watched Frisky nose back and forth, first across the dooryard of the deserted farm, then across the road.
"Has she lost it?" Ben asked.
"No, she'll pick it up in a minute or two I think, Naomi didn't say aloud. "It's just that she's found a whole tangle of scents in the road and she has to sort them out."
"Look!" Ben s
aid doubtfully. "She's off into the field there. That can't be right, can it?"
"I don't know. Would he have taken the road to the castle?"
Ben Staad was human, and he did slap his forehead. "No, of course not. I'm a dolt."
Naomi smiled sweetly and said nothing.
In the field, Frisky had paused. She turned toward THE GIRL and THE TALL-BOY and barked impatiently for them to follow. Anduan huskies were the tame descendants of the great white wolves the residents of the Northern Barony had feared in earlier times, but tame or not, they were hunters and trackers before they were anything else. Frisky had isolated that bright-blue thread of scent again, and was in a fever to be off.
"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 skirted 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 casde'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 toge
ther.
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.
Dennis had known that the ice would begin to grow dangerously rotten as he got closer to the outflow pipe. Even if he hadn't known, he was able to see the three feet or so of open water next to the wall.
Things weren't so easy for Ben, Naomi, and Frisky. They had simply assumed that if the ice was thick along the moat's outer bank, it must be thick all the way across. And their eyes were of little use to them in the thickly falling snow.
Frisky's eyes were the weakest of the three, and she was in the lead. Her ears were sharp enough, and she had heard the ice groaning beneath the new snow . . . but the scent was too much on her mind for her to take much notice of the faint creaks . . . until the ice gave way beneath her and she plunged into the moat with a splash.
"Frisky! Fr--"
Ben clapped a hand over her mouth. She struggled to get away from him. Ben had now seen the danger, however, and held her fast.
Naomi needn't have worried. Of course all dogs can swim, and with her thick, oily coat, Frisky was safer in the water than either of the humans would have been. She paddled almost to the castle wall amid chunks of rotted ice and whipped-cream globs of snow that quickly turned into dark slush and disappeared. She raised her head, smelling, searching for the scent . . . and when she knew where it went, she turned and paddled back toward Ben and Naomi. She found the edge of the ice. Her paws broke it off, and she tried again. Naomi cried out.
"Be still, Naomi, or you'll have us in the dungeons by dawn," Ben said. "Hold my ankles." He let her go and then sprawled on his belly. Naomi crouched behind him and seized his boots. This close to the ice, Ben could hear it groaning and muttering. It could have been one of us, he thought, and that would have been trouble indeed.