Heir of Thunder (Stormbourne Chronicles Book 1) (4 page)

Instead of asking him those things, I posed a less
provocative question. “Gideon?”

“Hmm?”

“How old are you?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know anything about you, and yet you’re risking so
much for me.”

We rode in silence to the other side of Brighton in silence.
I figured he had decided not to answer, so I let him alone, but when he put me
down next to a crop of large boulders, he paused for a moment. “I’m twenty.” He
jabbed a heel into Gespenst’s flank and they cantered away before I could
respond.

Twenty? He was no more than three years older than me, but
it seemed like ten. How had he managed to find his way onto my father’s estate,
into the position of horse master, at such a young age? I was still
contemplating the many mysteries of Gideon when the rumble of horse hooves
brought me back to the present. Peeking out from my position behind one of the
larger boulders, I saw Gideon on Gespenst, bringing Nonnie fast behind. “Evie,
they’re on our tail. Ride fast and try to stay close.”

He released Nonnie’s reins. I stepped out and threw my hands
up, slowing her long enough to jam my foot into her stirrup. She skidded in the
mud as she made the sudden stop. As quickly as I could take to the saddle, we
dashed away again, but Nonnie couldn’t keep up with Gespenst, who was bred for
speed and stamina. Gideon reined him back so as not to lose us in the darkness.

“We need to get off the road,” he called over his shoulder. “They
can’t track us in this storm.” He slowed and turned off the path into a thicket
of tall shrubbery.

I tried my best to follow him, although he was only a
shadow. Gespenst’s rump loomed in front of me and Nonnie reared, announcing her
displeasure with a shrill whinny. I clutched her reins and locked my legs
tighter around Nonnie’s sides, desperate to keep her from throwing me. Nonnie
dropped back on all fours with a sudden plop, and I opened my eyes, not realizing
I had squeezed them shut.

“Keep her quiet,” Gideon hissed. “We’ve got to pick our way
over the terrain and I can barely see. There’s little chance they can follow us
as long as we keep quiet and don’t give ourselves away.” He slipped to the
ground and motioned for me to follow.

I slid off Nonnie’s back and stepped behind Gideon as he led
his horse over a rough landscape that was difficult to discern in the darkness.
We were close enough to the road to hear our pursuers shouting at each other,
though their words were indistinguishable.

“What happened?” I whispered.

“Terrill spotted your horse at the stables. I got a head
start with her while he waited for the others.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Keep moving.”

We picked our way over the rocks and scruffy landscape for
what felt like hours before Gideon gave word for us to stop. The rain had
relaxed to a cold mist, and I wondered about the possibilities of starting a
fire, but trusted him to make that decision for us. He unrolled his damp
blanket on the ground and crouched beside it. “We’ll try to rest and, most
importantly, let the horses rest, but we’ll get a move on at first light.”

“Won’t they look for us?”

“I think they’ll save the trouble of it until the morning
when they’ll have a better chance of spotting us.”

I studied his shadow for a moment, trying to settle the
events of the evening in my mind and push away my dread for the long and
wretched remainder of the night. I felt sorry for him as he tried to get
comfortable beneath his wet blanket on the sodden ground. “I have a suggestion,
but I’m not sure how you’ll take it.”

Gideon sat up. Even in the darkness his posture seemed
petulant.

“Um.” I stopped and swallowed. “My blanket has managed to
stay much drier than yours. With my cloak I’ve got a pretty decent sleeping
arrangement. You’ve put yourself through a lot for me already, even though I
don’t know why. The least I can do is offer you a dry bed.”

He shifted and exhaled. “I’m not trading, Evie. I’m made of
tougher stuff than you.”

“I’m not talking about trading.”

“But you said—”

I gestured for silence, slicing my hand through the air. “I’m
talking about sharing. I’ll put my cloak down as a pallet and the blanket is
large enough to cover us both.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“It’s a great idea and you know it.”

After spreading my cloak on the ground, I stretched the
fabric, so I could lie on it without touching damp ground. Then I pulled out the
blanket under Nonnie’s saddlebags and flicked it a few times, freeing it of
excess hair, but I couldn’t relieve it of her sweat and general horsey smell.
Good
thing I like the smell of horses
.

Reclining, even on the hard ground, felt as good as a
feather mattress. I curled up on my side, waiting for him to make up his mind,
but even if he didn’t join me, I suspected I would sleep well. As I edged
toward the semi-conscious moment between asleep and awake, Gideon shifted and
swore. “Move over,” he grumbled.

I smiled, knowing he couldn’t see my self-satisfaction in
the dark. Together we stretch my cloak, making room for his large frame. He
settled close to me and his body heat under the wool blanket felt like a giant
version of the hot water bottle Gerda sometimes stuffed at the foot of my bed
on the coldest winter nights. I was too tired and too grateful for his warmth
to let his proximity bother me.

“Why do they want to hurt me?” I thought the question had
sounded in my head, but it slipped out between my lips before I realized.

For once, Gideon didn’t hesitate to reply, didn’t make
answering my question seem like a chore. “You’ll inherit your father’s throne
on your eighteenth birthday.”

“And they don’t want me to do that.” It seemed an obvious
conclusion.

“Mostly they see opportunity. You are young, still a girl in
their eyes. That makes you easy to defeat. If there was ever a time for a
revolution, it is surely now.”

“Revolution? What are they revolting against? Was my father
really such a horrible king?” I swallowed back my loathing for my father’s
faceless subjects, not wanting to accept Gideon’s words as truth.

“Do you really want to know everything, now, at this late
hour, when we’re exhausted and hungry and hiding from certain danger? Is this
the best place for me to diagram the history of the Stormbourne family for you?”

I considered Gideon’s point for a long, silent minute and
resented his sensibility. “No. It can wait. But, you
will
tell me.”

“Mmmph,” he said in reply.

I lay silent for a long while, fluctuating between anger and
frustration, defeat and hopelessness. At some point, fatigue took over, and the
relief of a dreamless sleep released me from futile contemplations.

I awoke before Gideon, unable to ignore the rocks jabbing
into my backside any longer. The palest light of dawn stole over us, and my
companion resembled a lumpy boulder under his dun colored blanket. I quieted
the whoosh of my breath and listened for sounds that might suggest the
proximity of our pursuers. Hearing nothing, I relaxed.

The horses had drifted away and nuzzled the barren ground,
looking for green bits wherever they managed to poke through the rocks and mud.
Their heads were down, ears forward, indicating they also heard nothing
suspicious.

As I rose, my rustling brought Gideon awake. He rubbed his
eyes and looked at me with a silent question.

“I don’t hear anyone,” I said, hoping he would agree.

He paused and seemed to quiet himself as I had done. “No.”
He shook his head. “There’s no one close by, but if we take the road we’ll find
them soon enough.”

“So, what do we do?”

He exhaled and his shoulders sagged. “We’ll have to go
further east, through the hills, and hope to avoid them. It’s going to add at
least another day to our travel time.”

The inclination to apologize tickled my lips, but I held
back the words. The conditions of our present situation were not my fault, and
I wouldn’t apologize for inconveniencing him when I still didn’t know how we
had come to be in this position in the first place. “I have another suggestion.”

“What’s that?” Gideon rose and went to his horse. He crammed
a piece of deer jerky in his mouth and chewed as he stuffed his wet things
away.

I followed his lead, gathering my blanket and sliding it
back in its place. Then I swirled my cloak over my shoulders and pulled the
hood over my hair. The rain may have dissipated, but dampness lingered in the
air, and the hood held a layer of warm air close to my neck and ears. “We can face
them,” I said.

Gideon’s eyes bulged and eyebrows shot toward his hairline. “Are
you mad? You have no fighting ability, and I can’t protect you and attack three
well-trained men at the same time.”

“Do you feel you could fight them if you didn’t have to
worry about me?”

His brows slid into a glower. “What do you mean?”

“This cloak might have a few more tricks woven into it.”

He gave me an irritated look that suggested I should quit
wasting his time and get to the point.

“I can’t make it work for both of us and the horses,” I
said. “The more it stretches, the thinner its effect, but as long as I’m the
only one beneath it, the cloak can make me virtually invisible.”

“Invisible? But you’ve been wearing it for two days, and I’ve
had no trouble seeing you.”

“There’s been no need for it before.”

“What about last night? You could have used it to come to
the village with me.”

I disliked giving away my secrets, but I hated arguing with
Gideon even more. “It doesn’t work at night—only in sunlight.”

“How inconvenient.” He grumbled something else, but it was
unintelligible.

“It’s not like my grandmother put restrictions on it on
purpose. It’s Magic for the gods’ sakes.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and shifted his weight to
one leg. Huffing, he jutted his chin. “Show me how it works, then.”

I glared at him, though I couldn’t hope to make my
expression as stern or as unpleasant as his—he’d had too many more years of
practice. The trick to the cloak was in the frog style clasp at the throat. I
slid the leather loop sewn to one side over the carved bone toggle attached at
the other side. Then I exhaled, twisted the clasp together, and spoke the magic
word—my grandfather’s name—on a soft breath only I could hear. “Trevelyan.”

The invisibility wasn’t perfect. The fabric reflected light,
and quick motions made it shimmer. The affect changed me into something like a
semi-translucent ghost. Contrary to common sense, the cloak worked best in
bright, direct sunlight. As the daylight dimmed, the cloak’s original material would
darken into its usual, opaque state.

“I can still make out your silhouette,” Gideon said.

“Yes, but it will become less noticeable as the sun rises.
From a distance, you would never know I was here.” Even in the short time since
waking, the day showed promise of making up for the previous one. Most of the
clouds had burned away, and the sky promised a clear and glorious day. A
perfect day, I hoped, for the cloak’s use.

I unfastened the cloak after my quick demonstration. The
downside to the cloak’s invisibility was the empty and loose feeling it gave the
wearer. It felt as though wind was whistling through my skin and between my rib
bones. If I kept the cloak fastened too long, dizziness and nausea would rob my
strength and energy.

“Well, that takes care of you,” he said, “but I still have
to get past three men, one of whom is the captain of your father’s personal
guard.”

“But you brought Sephonie, didn’t you?”

Reflexively, Gideon touched the tip of his crossbow where it
poked out from his pack. “I did.”

“Then those men don’t stand a chance.”

He shook his head and turned his attention back to his
saddlebags, rearranging its contents. “Your confidence in me might be a bit
exaggerated.”

“I’ve seen what you can do with that crossbow. I’m
misstating nothing.”

“Then what exactly are you proposing we do?”

I explained my idea, and he chewed on it for a while before
offering his critique. “I’m supposed to protect you, not throw you to the
lions.”

“Yes, but the Ancients never gave their lion fighters an
invisibility cloak or a back-up bow wielder with deadly aim.”

“I don’t like it, but I’ve got nothing better. If we go
around the long way in an effort to avoid them, the men will undoubtedly be
waiting for us in Braddock. I’m sure they’ve figured out our destination.”

Shortly after his capitulation, I mounted Nonnie and pointed
her in the general direction of the road. Gideon and Gespenst caught up to us,
and he reined in close. “Thropshire is about thirty miles down the road from
here,” he said, pointing in a southward direction. “It’s a big town, and you’ll
go unnoticed there even more than you would have in Brighton. Don’t stop. Don’t
wait for me under any circumstance. Get to Thropshire and try not to give
yourself away. There’s a decent inn there called The Silver Goose. Get to it
and get a room. I’ll find you there later.”

He passed me several coins. “This should be enough for the
room. Go ahead and order a meal and hot bath, too. If this plan works, I have a
feeling I’m going to want both very badly.”

I refastened the Thunder Cloak’s clasp, but refrained from
uttering the magic word, saving that for the last possible moment. We had
emerged from the little grove of trees to a place where the sunlight burned
truer. My cloak had a sufficient energy source to perform its magic in full,
now. The stronger light would make my invisibility more infallible.

“This is going to work,” I said. “All they’ll see is a horse
with no rider.”

Gideon grunted, but said nothing else. He directed his horse
with leg and thigh, his hands now occupied with Sephonie and her ammunition.
From his saddlebags, he withdrew a thick leather belt covered in loops and
pouches. The loops held a handful of bolts fletched with peacock feathers, and
the pouches carried extra magazines already loaded with more modest
projectiles. His crossbow was my father’s innovation: a small, lightweight repeating
crossbow that strung the bow and reloaded ammunition with a simple, one-handed
lever.

I knew so much about this weapon because my father awarded
one every year as a special prize for the winner of the archery section during
his annual tournament season. Gideon won the crossbow competition last year, easily
ousting his well-seasoned opposition. Why had he bothered to deflect my
championing of his abilities? That he was a marvel with this weapon was no
secret. I understood why Father might have asked Gideon, of all people, to
protect me. But I still didn’t understand why he had accepted.

“You’ll go on my word—full gallop,” he said. “Don’t stop.”

“You already said that.” A grin tugged at the corner of my
mouth. His concern for me was charming.

He narrowed his eyes, urging me to be less glib.

We walked for almost a mile before Gespenst snorted and
stuttered in his gait. Gideon patted his neck. “I think we’re close. He doesn’t
like strange horses, or strange people at that.”

He pulled the lever that engaged Sephonie’s bowstring and
loaded a bolt, but he left the point tipped down at his side and behind his
leg, making it less detectable from a distance. “Say your magic words and get
ready to run, Evie.”

I gathered my cloak tightly around me and whispered my
grandfather’s name as my pulse raced. My heart beat a rhythm of urgency in my
chest. Gideon’s eyes bugged and he gasped.

“Told you it would work,” I said.

Gespenst had sensed correctly. At the crest of a short rise,
about two-hundred yards ahead, Terrill and his men waited on agitated horses,
the beasts reacting to their master’s excitement and anticipation. The men drew
their weapons, crossbows as well as rifles. Terrill, at the head, shouted for
us to halt.

Low and under his breath, Gideon issued the command to run. I
shoved my heel into Nonnie’s flank. She lunged and took off racing. Wind tore
at her mane and at my cloak, but it stayed in place and kept me hidden. The men
responded with astonished yelps at the sight of an unattended horse charging
toward them.

“Where’s the girl?” Terrill yelled. Nonnie’s fast approach
upset the men’s horses, and they skittered out of her way, acting against their
master’s commands. I squeezed past the group, and they paid me no mind. The men
had focused, as we had hoped, on the threatening figure drawing his crossbow
behind me.

Even over the wind rushing past my ears and the hammering of
my heart, I heard the
thwack
of Gideon’s weapon as it released a bolt.
Moments later, Sephonie’s victim cried out, a terrible howl. The return fire
from the men’s rifles sounded like a pack of ravenous dogs. I didn’t look back
to see who had received Gideon’s deathly tidings. He would have to give me the
details later in the safety of The Silver Goose’s private rooms.

I unbuttoned my cloak as soon as Nonnie and I rode out of
view. Fear drove me, while duty and obedience kept her legs pumping over the
rutted and muddy road. We left the path from time to time to avoid the
sloppiest, hoof sucking sections, and I hoped the journey wouldn’t abuse her
too much. At Fallstaff, Gideon had made me groom Nonnie, but he had her shod
along with the rest of Fallstaff’s horses, and I didn’t know the last time she
had seen the farrier.

Nonnie and I eventually slowed to a walk. The days of solid
travel and poor sleep had dwindled our energy reserves. It might have been only
our third morning on the road, but we were accustomed to casual romps around
the estate, typically undertaking our adventures on full bellies and returning at
night to plush sleeping arrangements.

I would have given my eyeteeth to have the treatment formerly
given to my beautiful mare in our stables: a soft bed of clean hay and a solid,
dry roof. Even a bag of oats sounded good. With hot water I could have made
porridge—bland but filling. The rabbits from yesterday’s breakfast were long
gone, and I regretted not asking for a piece of Gideon’s jerky.

We rode throughout the morning without a sign of Gideon.
How
long should it take an expert archer to dispatch a small band of men?
Only
at that thought did I consider how Gideon might have come to possess such
skills. His station as horse master required no mastery of lethal abilities.
Distracted in my musings, I had allowed Nonnie to tug us off the path toward a
stream. I dismounted and knelt to fill my water jugs, but my body moved
automatically while my mind puzzled the mysteries of my father’s horse master,
but too many pieces were missing to make a complete picture.

The caws from a passing flock of crows startled me from my musing.
I climbed on Nonnie’s back, and we started off again. For the rest of the
journey to Thropshire, I anticipated the pounding hooves of Gespenst catching
up to us. Any horse racing after me could have belonged to my enemy, as well,
but I refused to humor that possibility—it was too frightening.

I only realized I had spurred my horse into a trot when the
saddle bumped and jostled against my sore rear end. After adjusting my seat, I
maintained our pace until we crested a final hill. When I spotted the sprawling
village of Thropshire in the valley below, I leaned forward, shifting into a
posture meant for a faster gait but checked myself before I nudged Nonnie into
a gallop. Gideon had warned me to keep my presence covert.
Can’t very well
do that thundering into town square, can I?

“C’mon girl.” I stroked her neck and eased our pace into a
gentle walk. “Just a little bit further. Then, I promise, we’ll both get some
rest.”