Inkspell

43. THE BURNING TREE

Resa's feet were bleeding. The road was stony and wet with the morning dew. They all had their hands bound again, except the children. She had been terrified that the soldiers wouldn't let them walk with the other prisoners but would load them onto the cart instead. "Cry if they try to make you get up there!" she had whispered to the little ones. "Cry and scream until they let you walk with us." But luckily that hadn't been necessary. How scared the three children looked – two girls and a boy, not counting the baby still inside Mina's belly.

The elder girl, who was just six, was walking between Resa and Mina. Whenever Resa glanced at her she wondered what Meggie had looked like at that age. Mo had shown her photographs, wonderful photographs taken in all the years she herself had missed, but those weren't her own memories but his. And Meggie’s.

Brave Meggie. Resa's heart still contracted when she remembered how her daughter had passed her the sheet of paper in the stable. Where was she now? Was she watching them from somewhere in the forest?

Only when the hue and cry over the Black Prince had broken out had she been able to read the note, by the light of the torch left burning overnight in the stable. None of the others could read, so she had been able to pass on Dustfinger's news to the women sitting near her only in whispers. After that, there had been no chance to tell the men, too, but the ones who could walk would run, anyway. Resa was to look after the children, and they knew what they were to do.

The other girl and the boy were walking between their mother and the woman with clawlike fingers who had wanted to take Mo back to Capricorn's fortress. Resa had said nothing to her about Dustfinger's news, and every glance the woman cast her said: I was right, too! But Mina smiled when she looked at Resa, Mina with her round belly, who could have thought she had good reason to hate her for what had happened. Perhaps the flowers she gave Resa in the cave really had brought luck. Mo was better, much better – after she had thought for so many endless hours that every breath he drew would be his last. Now that the Prince had escaped, a horse was pulling the cart with Mo on it. The bear had set the Prince free, they whispered, which finally proved that he was indeed a Night-Mare. His ghostly glance had made the chains disappear, and he had turned himself into a human being and cut his master's bonds. Resa wondered whether that human being had a scarred face.

When all the noise had begun in the night she had been so scared for Dustfinger, Meggie, and the boy, but next morning the fury on the soldiers' faces told her that they had gotten away.

But where was the fallen tree Meggie had mentioned in her note?

The little girl beside her was clinging to her dress. Resa smiled at the child – and sensed the Piper looking down at her from his horse. She quickly turned her head away. Luckily, neither he nor Firefox had recognized her. She had often enough listened to the Piper's bloodthirsty songs in Capricorn's fortress – the minstrel still had a human nose on his face in those days – and she had polished Firefox's boots, but fortunately he had not been one of those who chased her and the other maids.

Up above the prisoners' heads the soldiers were describing, at the tops of their voices, what their master would do to the Black Prince once he'd caught him and his enchanted bear again. Now that they were on horseback once more their tempers had clearly improved. From time to time the Piper turned in his saddle and contributed some particularly cruel idea. Resa would have liked to put her hands over the ears of the little girl beside her. The child's mother was not among the prisoners but was wandering the country with some of the other strolling players, happy in the belief that her daughter was safe in the Secret Camp.

The girl would run. So would the other children with their mother. The claw-fingered woman would probably try to escape, too, and Sootbird and most of the other men. The minstrel with the injured leg who was on the cart with Mo would stay, like Twofingers, because he was afraid of the soldiers' crossbows, and so would the old stilt-walker, who no longer trusted his legs. Benedicta, who could hardly see where she was going, would stay behind, too, and Mina, whose child would soon be coming into the world… and Mo.

Piper. His silver nose had slipped out of place, and his horse was still shying hard as he pulled on the reins. Some of the men obeyed, stumbling halfheartedly into the forest but retreating again as a shadow stirred in the undergrowth, growling.

"The Night-Mare!" one of them shouted, and the next moment they were all back in the middle of the road, pale-faced and with trembling hands, as if the swords they held could do nothing to defend them from the horror lurking in the trees.

"Night-Mare? This is broad daylight, you fools!" Firefox yelled at them. "That's a bear, nothing but a bear!"

Hesitantly, they moved toward the forest again, keeping close together like a brood of chicks hiding behind their mother. Resa heard them swearing as they used their swords to cut a path through the twining wild vines and brambles, while their horses stood in the road snorting and trembling. Firefox and the Piper put their heads together, while the soldiers still standing in the road to guard the remaining prisoners stared at the forest wide-eyed, as if the Night-Mare that looked so deceptively like a bear would leap out at any moment and swallow them up, skin and hair and all, in the usual manner of ghosts.

Resa saw Mo glance at her, saw the relief in his face when he saw her – and his disappointment that she was still there, too. He was still pale, but no longer as pale as if the hand of Death had touched his face. She took a step toward the cart, wanting to go to him, take his hand, see if it was still hot with the fever, but one of the soldiers roughly pushed her back.

The tree was still burning. The flames crackled as if they were singing a mocking song about the Adderhead, and when the men who had gone into the forest came back, they brought not a single one of the escaped prisoners with them.