“Used to be,” the sec boss replied. “Hasn’t worked in my lifetime.”
Jak was alongside and he suddenly stood in the stirrups, looking back over his shoulder.
“What?” Ryan said.
“One horse. Pushed hard. From ville.”
“Only one?”
“Yeah.”
“Must be some kind of message from the baron,” Rainey said. “Mebbe he wants us back.”
But the messenger, astride an Appaloosa gelding, was Krysty.
They waited as she galloped up to them, her horse’s flanks streaked with sweat. Her own fiery hair was tangled, and there were burrs stuck in her clothes where she’d ridden hard and cut corners. The woman reined in, brushing pine needles from her thighs.
“Boys have gone,” she said.
“Why’ve you come to tell us?” Rainey asked suspiciously. “Why not one of the sec men?” He looked at her horse. “And you got the baron’s best mount.” She fought for breath. “He was showing it to me in the yard out back of the ville when the word came that the boys had taken two ponies and vanished. Weyman asked if I could ride and told me where to go. Nobody else was around and ready.”
“Fireblast!” Ryan punched his right hand hard into his left palm.
“They following us?” Trader said thin-lipped. “Need their asses reddened!”
“We stopped when Jak’s horse went down. Better part of an hour wasted and lost.” Ryan suddenly remembered the odd stillness when he’d gone into the forest for a piss. “The trail that runs higher up,” he said.
“Think they’ve taken that?” Rainey looked down toward the ruined mill. “Paths come together just down there. We can see from the tracks if they’ve come this way.”
J.B. looked at Krysty. “Baron Weyman sending out any reinforcements?”
“Don’t think so. He didn’t seem too worried. Said it was a boyish prank.”
Trader snorted. “Your son should know better, Ryan,” he said. “Can’t answer for that other boy.”
“Can’t argue, Trader.” Ryan considered the options. They’d come a fair distance from the ville. If the brushwood men and women were still in the area, then they could, just possibly, be hunting out this far.
It was a worrying thought with the two boys missing in the area.
“We’ll go down and take a look by the mill,” Rainey decided. “You got a good tracker in your party, outlander?”
“Jak.”
“Come on.” He beckoned the albino to follow him down the steep track.
YOU DIDN’T NEED TO BE an expert in reading signs to see what had happened.
“Two ponies,” Jak said, pointing to the clear hoof marks. “Tethered around back. Dean and other go in. Men waiting. Watching them.”
“Marks are deeper,” J.B. said. “Not muties. Got to be the brushwooders.”
“Struggle. Not much. Not long. Eight men or so against two children. Left west. Took ponies.”
Ryan knelt and looked at the trampled marks in the wet mud, seeing the way that water was still seeping into some of them. “Not all that long ago,” he guessed.
“Within the hour,” Jak agreed. Even in the dark interior of the wrecked building, his hair still blazed like a lamp. “Could still be around.”
“They’d have hit us as we came down the trail,” Trader stated. “Like blasting fish in a barrel. No, Jak. They’ve lifted the boys and now they’re taking them all the way back to their camp. Best we get after them right away.”
Rainey was out of his depth. His eyes darted nervously from face to face, the narrow mouth betraying his confusion. “Mebbe we ought to send for some reinforcements.”
“Longer you wait, the less chance of getting Dean and Jamie back alive and safe.” Ryan rubbed a finger down his chin, feeling the smoothness where he’d had an overdue shave before breakfast that morning.
“They could be anywhere,” Rainey argued. “Brushwooders move their camp all the time.”
“Not if we follow the tracks.” Ryan looked the sec boss in the eye. “I don’t mind much what you decide to do, Rainey. But they’ve likely got my only child. All I aim to do is go get him back. Quicker the better.”
DEAN WAS JOLTING along on the back of a horse, his wrists tied to his ankles, under the animal’s belly. The sack over his head, stinking of fish meal, made it impossible to see where they were going. But he knew that they would be heading west, knew precisely who their captors were, knew that the dangerous man called Straub rode the horse that was carrying him away into imprisonment.