Later, when Precious Wind covered them with a light blanket, three creatures were asleep in a heap, and the fourth was hidden in a pocket. Precious Wind went looking for Bear. She found him kneeling beside the road, his hand hovering over the wheel tracks.
“Did you eat? You’ve been somewhere else for a time.”
“I ate while walking. Out on the Wellsport road, I saw tracks of several horses, ridden hard, that came to the crossroad from the west. They slowed, then walked east along Riversmeet and on to the top of a little hill where one can see a good distance farther. Then, turn about, same horses walking to the crossroad, then ridden hard back the way they came.”
“As though to see if we had passed?”
“Which we would have done save for that desecrated ox wagon. Those weren’t the only tracks. Earlier than that, one horseman came north from Altamont, rode on north, past the bridge, on to the top of the first hill, where he could see a good way toward the town of Hives, then returned in a hurry. Then, on top of those hoofprints, I found the tracks of those oxen coming south from Altamont. They stopped here. The oxen had time to browse off the roadside foliage; it’s bitten fresh. They waited here until the single horseman returned to say we were coming, then went across the bridge, turned around, and came back this way with no motive other than to remove a wheel, block the bridge, and prevent us from going on. I feel nothing in the tracks, but then, even though many Tingawans have that talent, I have only a little of it.”
“Well, I have a small talent in that direction,” said Precious Wind, standing tall and staring back through the trees at the quiet glow of the fire, burning itself out among its stones. “And what I have of it makes me edgy.”
He said calmly, “Well yes, but any unexpected change makes us feel that way, doesn’t it? At least two groups of people expected us to turn onto the Royal Road and go some way east; one set was disconcerted that we didn’t, the other prevented our doing so. Perhaps we should have gone on. Still, we’d have had to make camp in the dark. Besides, Bartelmy knows the animals better than any of us, and no doubt he was right about their being tired.”
“We set a watch?”
“As prudence undoubtedly dictates, yes. I’ll take first. Tell the others I’ll be waking one of them.”
She returned to the clearing, glancing over her shoulder at the stooped form behind her. Bear was still studying the road. He was apprehensive, or at least as much so as Bear ever allowed himself to be.
Nettie, Oldwife, and Precious Wind joined Xulai in the nest, where Precious Wind told them what Bear had found. Willum and Clive put their blanket rolls under the wagon; Pecky and Black Mike unrolled theirs under the dray. Bear ambled around the camp while Bartelmy lay down under the carriage he had driven. The fire died down. Bear covered the coals to keep them for morning and prevent the fire spreading if a wind came up. When the place was silent except for rhythmic snores from under the wagons and an occasional whicker of a horse moving about among the trees, Bear took his seat in the carriage and set himself to wait.
The rose moon floated up gradually over the eastern trees, casting its pale light into the clearing, only a few days past full. In the western sky, a toenail of ivory moon dropped toward the last glow of sunset. The rose and green moons were said to be artificial. Constructions made by mankind in the Before Time. Bear did not know whether he believed that or not. Occasionally a night bird called. Insects in the trees made a rhythmic stridulation, gradually falling silent as the moon sank beyond the mountains. The birds quieted. The horses stopped talking to one another. Bear sat up straight, shaking drowsiness away. Night moved toward its center: no owl, no bat, no sleepy bird meant it was unusually, unseemly quiet.
All of which changed in an instant. Something howled in the woods. A horse screamed, then another and another. More howls, more screams, noises of breaking branches, then a flash of lightning! A thunder of hooves, all the horses, all the mules, gone, away, faster than one might imagine! Precious Wind was standing beside the carriage, her firm hand on his knee.
“We thought there’d be something, and that was it,” she murmured in a cool tone of very slight annoyance. “It wasn’t wolves.”
“No,” he mused. “Wolves don’t break hobbles, and neither do lightning bolts.”
“What now?” she asked.
“Wait until light,” he said between clenched teeth. “Horsemaster has his horses trained like homing pigeons! They’ll be all the way back at Woldsgard castle by morning!”
“Never mind,” said a small voice.
He looked down to see Xulai standing just behind Precious Wind, her eyes glued half-shut with sleep.
“Just go to sleep, Bear,” she said. “You, too, Precious Wind. Likely the witch has done all she’s going to do. By morning, the animals should all be back, right here.” She yawned and turned back the way she had come. Giving Bear an incredulous look, Precious Wind went after her.
“So you’re not worried about the horses?” Precious Wind asked.
Xulai spoke as though from a dream. “I’d be more worried about the thing she sent to chase the horses, but I think something—maybe a chipmunk or something—killed it.” She trudged to the edge of her nest, falling drowsily into it beside the
