Heart's Blood

  He wondered briefly if he might be able to outrun them. Probably in the short term. They didn't look built for speed but for endurance. However, that meant in the end they'd run him down. Still, if their route took them anywhere near water—the river wasn't far from here—he could dive in.

  I've never seen a trog who could swim. It was a long shot, but it might be the only shot he had.

  Then he reminded himself that the longer he delayed the trogs, the more likely it was that the dragons would awake. Or nursery folk. Perhaps Golden might even fly by in his copter.

  Yes, his first line of defense had to be delay.

  Foot drag.

  Twist an ankle.

  Start a fight.

  Fall down.

  All of the above.

  Because he had to do whatever it took to slow their headlong rush toward the caves. And maybe along the way, he could figure out how they'd found him and why they'd targeted him. And if they knew where Akki was.

  He was suddenly afraid they might have caught Akki, as well. And if she'd been taken to the caves, he'd have to go there without a second thought.

  But then, before he could spiral down into panic and despair, he began to think more clearly: Akki had left in a truck during daylight, heading for The Rokk. The trogs couldn't tackle either a truck or the city. If she saw them—and they were unmistakable—she'd have urged the driver to go even faster. No, there was no chance the trogs had gotten her. He was the only one in danger from them. Akki, at least, was safe in The Rokk. He could relax about her and concentrate on getting himself out of this mess.

  One thing at a time, Jakkin.

  Checking the thought wall again, he began to plan: a dive in the river, or fire from the brood. Or both. Fire and water. That's the way he'd break free.

  He couldn't have been more wrong.

  31

  SINCE JAKKIN'S only plan was to delay the trogs, he figured the best way to do that would be to fake a fall. Not one in which he hurt himself, of course, but one convincing enough to slow them down.

  His first, falling forward onto his bound hands, earned him a quick drag up to his feet and a punch in his side. His trip over the roots of a lone spikka tree, then twisting backward—a drag and another punch. Bumbling against two of the trogs, causing one of them to land hard on hands and knees—a drag and a great deal of shouting. Though what was shouted Jakkin couldn't have said.

  What hurt most were not the draggings up or the punches, or even the mind-shouting. What hurt most was that nothing seemed to slow them at all.

  It's time for more drastic measures.

  As they trotted along, Jakkin occasionally stumbled, just to remind everyone of how weak he was. All the while, though, he kept looking for something that could be considered "drastic measures." Yet, for the longest while, no such opportunity presented itself. Jakkin grew increasingly worried. Stall and stumble as much as he might, the trogs kept moving forward at an alarming and increasing pace, and they were pushing and pulling him along with them.

  Now the twin moons shone down like giant lanterns, the hills so highly illuminated, any cracks and crevices stood out as black wounds on a lighter skin. Jakkin and the trogs were moving so quickly, the tree where he'd slept a night or two ago was well behind them.

  They'd just neared the top of a smallish rise when Jakkin suddenly—and without mentally warning the trogs—flung himself sideways onto the ground. Rolling back down the hill, his bound hands now above his head to guard his face, he banged against small pebbles and fist-sized rocks. He was bruised a bit but not too badly.

  But because of the odd shadows, he hadn't noticed a rock that humped up like a hatchling's back on the left side of the trail. The rock was in the middle of a patch of high grass, so it had been hidden from casual inspection. As luck would have it, when he rolled past the rock, the back of his head thunked hard on it and not the grass.

  Jakkin rolled on down the hill, gathering speed and losing consciousness at approximately the same rate. The trogs clattered down after him, calling to one another like demented dragonlings, pipping both anger and distress. By the time Jakkin reached the bottom, he was out cold, surrounded by the angry trogs.

  He came to with a splitting headache and a strange feeling of motion. And then he realized that his hands and feet had been tied to a long pole fashioned from the limb of a spikka. Finding the tree, trimming the limb, and trussing him up must have taken a great deal of time.

  Good, he thought grimly through the pain. He'd managed to slow them down at last.

  Two trogs held up the front end of the pole, and two the back. They were carrying him between them, like a captured animal. The swaying of the pole could have been comforting, could even have rocked him to sleep, but instead the movement turned his stomach.

  "Stop! Stop!" he cried aloud, afraid he was about to be sick.

  The trogs paid no attention and kept on walking. Walking slowly, for sure—carrying him this way was awkward—but they were still on the move. Jakkin could see that they were now in a bit of a valley, the hills mounding up on either side of the rocky path.

  Now the trogs stepped carefully but were more casual with the pole, letting it swing back and forth, back and forth.

  Jakkin's appreciation for their slowness didn't help his stomach any. In fact, the more he swayed on the pole, the worse he felt. At last, he turned his head to the right side and—with neither warning nor apology—threw up on the stony ground. The spew hit the stones, rebounding backward, and sprayed over the legs and sandaled feet of the trog nearest his head.

  In the midst of his agony, he almost laughed because the trog growled and dropped his hold on the stick while he tried to jump away from the spray. The other three growled back, and then they laughed uproariously, a strange kind of hooting sound. Then they set the pole down.

  As soon as Jakkin touched the ground—solid, unmoving—he turned over onto his stomach and threw up again. And again. Then he scrabbled backward on his hands and knees, dragging the pole with him, to get as far away from the stinking mess as he could.

  Once his stomach was completely empty and the spasms had passed, he had time to think. What if he had a concussion from hitting his head on the rock? Right after thinking that, he passed out again.

  ***

  WHEN HE came to, besides a splitting headache, besides the bumps and bruises, he felt fine. If you can be fine upside-down and carried on a pole by four subhumans going up a hill. If you can forget that your mouth tastes like fewmets, that your stomach feels as if a dragon has rolled over it. Fine if you aren't scared that everything you love is about to be slaughtered.

  At least the trogs were now huffing a bit and going slow. Jakkin wished he weighed as much as Kkarina, to slow them down even further.

  "Set me on the ground," he said aloud. Then tearing down the top section of his thought wall, he sent them a fiery scene of the pole burning, which then set all four of them alight.

  To his surprise, following a flurry of sendings to one another, they lowered him down.

  "Walk now!" one trog sent to him, a meaty hand outstretched and pointing at Jakkin.

  "Okay, Big Boss."

  The others busied themselves untying Jakkin's hands and feet. At each touch, he got a flash of what they were thinking. It was a combination of anger, weariness, fear. But mostly anger. At him, at being away from their caves, and—surprisingly—at Big Boss.

  Good to know. He carefully shielded the thought from the trogs.

  Sitting up slowly, Jakkin wasted several minutes by rubbing his wrists and ankles, still surprised that the trogs had set him free. But he guessed they were tired of hauling him around on the pole and felt they could make better time if he walked on his own. They were probably pretty sure he couldn't escape. After all, he'd been limping and throwing up. He couldn't have much energy left.

  Well, are they in for a big surprise!

  After about five minutes of flexing his wrists and standing up slowly, he rea
ched for the pole. His head had stopped aching.

  Two of the trogs started toward him, but Big Boss stopped them. He picked up the pole and slammed it into Jakkin's hand.

  "WALK NOW!"

  The sending was loud enough to start Jakkin's head throbbing again. Automatically, he put a hand to his temples and winced. He hadn't planned to do that, wasn't faking, but the four trogs nodded at one another, clearly believing him weaker than he actually was. So, slowly, he took the pole and started walking, leaning heavily on it as if his legs could scarcely hold him.

  "FASTER!" That was clearly Big Boss, who seemed to have only one volume. Loud.

  Jakkin stopped, faced the trog leader, then said, "If you want me to go faster, you'll have to carry me again." It was too many words for Big Boss, but Jakkin's meaning was clear enough, because at the same time, he sent a gray and blue picture showing himself lying down next to the pole, ready to be trussed up again.

  Big Boss nodded, grunted, turned his back on Jakkin, and walked away, two trogs in his wake. Jakkin and the fourth trog were meant to follow and they did.

  They reached the end of the valley and turned.

  Not north as Jakkin had supposed. Not toward the dark brooding shadows of the mountains and the caves where the trogs would be safe and he would remain a prisoner. But slowly they headed southeast toward the dunes.

  And that, he realized with a sinking heart, would lead straight to the oasis. And after that—the nursery.

  Had he underestimated them? Had they been planning to attack the nursery from the beginning, to get Auricle back themselves? If so—why did they capture me? He was afraid that the answer was that they'd seen the direction the copter had chosen and when they were ready—made a plan—they'd gone that way until they'd come upon his tracks. Only it had been his new track, toward The Rokk, that they had followed. And since he was without the dragon and hatchling when they found him, now they were backtracking to get to the place where he'd left the two. That track would lead them right to the nursery.

  Leaning heavily on the pole, he limped after Big Boss and his followers, followed in turn by the final trog. As he walked, Jakkin began building the thought wall up again, stone by stone, till it was thick and sturdy and impenetrable. Only then did he try to figure out what everything really meant.

  If they went directly to the nursery to attack it, he could call out for his friends. We have numbers and firepower on our side. But only if the trogs don't attack during Dark-After. In the cold he'd be on his own. He wondered if the trogs knew that. He turned around and checked the sky. The moons were almost down behind the mountains. Dark-After would begin any minute.

  If they detoured through the oasis, he might be able to signal the dragons. But he'd have only a single chance before the trogs shut him up. He already knew how they controlled dragons with their minds. Did he want to put any of the brood in danger, just to save himself? That's how Heart's Blood had died. He couldn't allow such a thing to happen again.

  He wondered if anyone would be on night duty in the incubarn. If any of the hens was nearing time to lay, one of the senior men would definitely be there. He hoped so. The boys simply couldn't hold this crew off. Slakk was presumably still too weak from the drakk attack. Errikkin would be a disaster. He'd be just as likely to help the trogs to get even with Jakkin for some imagined slight. L'Erikk—well, he would be a joke in more than one way. Jakkin hardly knew what to think about the other boys.

  He wondered if he could reach a stinger in time, without a key to the cabinet. Maybe he could race to the bondhouse for a stinger. Could he figure out how to use one? Could he kill a man? Even a caveman? Would Auricle go peacefully back to the caves with the trogs? The number of questions simply overwhelmed him.

  And then he realized that the trogs couldn't leave him alive. Alive, he'd lead his friends into the mountains, right to the caves where the trogs lived. No. Not only am I expendable, they have to kill me. The real question was whether they planned to kill him sooner—before they mounted their attack—or later, after he showed them where Auricle was kept. Or will they march me back to the mountains to be sacrificed in some awful way?

  Silently, he hefted the pole. When he set it down on end again, he leaned heavily on it as if hardly able to move. At least—at least now I have a weapon in hand.

  32

  HIS THOUGHT WALL held and none of the trogs showed the slightest bit of interest in him, other than to push him on. He stumbled along as if he could barely move any faster. Clearly, he had them all fooled.

  Big Boss, the tracker of the group, stopped every once in a while to point out the way to the others. The trogs listened to him, gabbling mind-to-mind, and there was hardly any argument. He seemed to have some kind of hold over them. Jakkin couldn't figure out what it was. Maybe he was just that much bigger or older or stronger or smarter. Maybe he'd been appointed the head of this group of four. Whatever that hold, Big Boss was definitely the one to worry about.

  Jakkin tried to listen in on their mind conversations through a small chink he'd bored through his thought wall. He'd hoped to overhear something of their plans, but the only thing that leaked through was a kind of gabble-gabble-gabble. He could find out nothing tangible.

  He began to panic. There was now little between the trogs and the nursery but sand and oasis and time. And not much time, at that. Glancing up at the sky, he saw that the twin moons were gone from the horizon. Dark-After was about to start.

  Since there'd been little wind over the past few days, his tracks showed clearly. It wouldn't take much skill to follow the trail to the oasis, even in Dark-After. How naive he'd been.

  "Fewmetty trogs," Jakkin muttered to himself, earning a smack on the head from the one behind him.

  "Ow!" Jakkin turned without warning and whacked back at the trog, hitting him on the head with a closed fist, which surprised them both.

  The trog made a sound like whaaa and Big Boss glared at him.

  "No kriah!" The sending went directly to the crying trog, but Big Boss's anger leaked out so that Jakkin also caught some of it. It was like a sliver in the eye. Jakkin wondered what the full blast must have felt like and was glad he didn't know.

  Poor trog! he thought sarcastically. Hope it hurt like drakk's blood. He remembered Slakk kneeling in the barn, burned by such blood, and the sudden burst of fear that had emanated from him in a kind of sending. He was suddenly sorry he hadn't visited Slakk before leaving and wondered if he'd ever see his friend again.

  Then he shook himself mentally. What worm drivel. His left hand made a fist, the right held tight to the pole. I have to be cold. I have to be tough. I have to be ...

  He never got to finish that thought, because they'd found the oasis from the back end, looking down on it from a dune. Jakkin was startled. The oasis—this soon? He was not used to coming upon it this way, and he was certainly not ready to be there. He took a deep breath, a gasp really. The stars gazed pitilessly on them all, outlining them in shadow.

  Jakkin didn't move. He stood leaning against the pole, watching as Big Boss and the trogs slid down the sand hill on their bellies and into the water. They gulped noisily as they drank.

  Big Boss looked up, suddenly realizing that all three of his companions were with him, which meant no one was guarding Jakkin. He began to give them a mental lashing. One of the trogs started to stand, ready to go back and take care of their prisoner.

  Jakkin was parched as well, but he was furious, too. The trogs were trashing his most private memories simply by being in Heart's Blood's pool. And he stoked that fury to a white heat, all in seconds, then ran screaming down the dune, flailing with the pole.

  At the pool's edge, he struck forward and back with the pole, hitting out as hard as he could. He connected first with the head of the standing trog, who fell sideways and immediately slipped under the water, wavelets lapping at his now submerged head. On the backswing, Jakkin connected with the trog next to Big Boss. It didn't drown him, but smashed his s
houlder, and his right arm drooped as if the bone were broken, effectively putting him out of commission.

  Big Boss turned and, still sitting in the water, grabbed at the pole end and yanked it out of Jakkin's hands, though the action sent him sprawling backward and he lay for long seconds in the water.

  At this point, Jakkin simply let him have the pole. Then showing speed none of them expected from him, he raced around the far side of the pool and ran through the patch of wort. Since it was night, and Dark-After, the leaves were closed tight and so none of the wort burned his legs.

  He kept on running, and even though the cold of Dark-After was snaking across his body, he was sweating. He guessed that at least two of the trogs would soon be on his trail, but they'd have to stop to check his tracks in the dark.

  Advantage, he thought grimly, to me.

  As he ran, he gave a quick shout and a sending to the dragons. It was like a bright red and white fire fall. This was not the time to worry about the trogs hearing him. Of course they'd hear. But he needed to find the dragons—and fast. He needed their fire and their might.

  They didn't answer.

  He kept calling and sending as he ran. But all he met with was silence. Wherever the brood was, it wasn't here.

  So now he kept quiet and used his energy for running. He broke into a loping, ground-eating run, and made it back to the weir in record time.

  As he crossed the weir, he hoped that it would also buy him time, since the trogs wouldn't know which way he'd gone in the water. Though when they got this far, they would be able to smell the dragons in the barns. If he was lucky, they'd go to the stud barn first. That would slow them down. If he was lucky. The way things were going, Jakkin didn't plan to rely on luck.

  Dripping, cold, he stayed in the weir until the last minute, then dashed across the yard to the incubarn and tried to open the door. It was locked from the inside, so he hammered on it.

  After long moments, the door squalled as it was opened a crack.