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.
The road went ever more steeply downhill. Overhead, the branches of the trees were intertwined. It was a still, windless morning, cloudy and damp, but Dustfinger’s fires burned even in rain. Resa peered past the horses. How close together the trees stood, nothing but darkness showing between them even in broad daylight. The plan was for them to run to the left.
Did Meggie expect her to try and escape, too? How often she had asked herself that – and she always came to the same conclusion: No, Meggie knows that I won’t leave her father alone. She loves him just as much.
Resa’s pace slowed. There it was, the fallen tree, its trunk green with moss. The little girl looked up at her, wide-eyed. They had feared that one of the children would talk, but they had been silent as the grave all morning.
Firefox swore when he saw the tree. He reined in his horse and told the first four horsemen to dismount and clear the obstacle out of the way. They obeyed, looking sullen, handed their horses’ reins to other men and strode toward the tree trunk. Resa dared not look at the roadside, for fear that any glance of hers might give away Dustfinger or Meggie. She thought she heard fingers snapping and then a whisper, barely audible. Not human words, but fire-words.
Dustfinger had once spoken them for her in the other world, where they didn’t work, where fire was deaf and dumb. “They sound much better when I say them there,” he had said, and he told her about the fire-honey he took from the elves. She remembered the sound very well, all the same – as if flames were biting their way through black coal, as if they were hungrily devouring white paper. No one else heard the whisper through the rustle of the leaves, the steady rain, the twittering of birds, and the chirping of crickets.
The fire licked up from beneath the bark of the tree like a nest full of snakes. The men didn’t notice. Only when the first flame shot up, hot and greedy, rising so high that it almost brought down the leaves of the trees, did they stumble back in alarm and disbelief. The riderless horses reared and tried to break free as the fire hissed and danced.
“Run!” whispered Resa, and the little girl ran for it, fleetfooted as a fawn. Children, women, men, they all ran toward the trees – Sootbird, the claw-fingered woman – past the shying horses they ran, and into the shelter of the dark forest. Two soldiers shot arrows after them, but their own horses were rearing in fear of the fire, and the arrows buried themselves in the bark of trees instead of in human flesh. Resa saw fugitive after fugitive disappear among the trees while the soldiers shouted at one another, and it hurt her to stay standing there, it hurt badly.
The tree went on burning, its bark turned black… Run, thought Resa, run, all of you! Yet she herself still stood there although her feet longed to run, too, run away, run to her daughter waiting somewhere in the trees. Yet she stayed there. She stood still. There was just one thing she must not think of: that they would shut her up again. For if she did she would run in spite of Mo. She’d run and run and never stop again. She had been a prisoner too long, she had lived on nothing but memories too long, memories of Mo, memories of Meggie .. She had fed on them all those years when she served first Mortola, then Capricorn.
“Don’t get any silly ideas, Bluejay!” she heard one of the soldiers call back. “Or I’ll put an arrow through you!”
“What kind of ideas did you have in mind?” replied Mo. “Do I look stupid enough to run away from your crossbow?” She could almost have laughed. He’d always been able to make her laugh so easily.
“What are you waiting for? Fetch them back!” roared the 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 half-heartedly 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.
Chapter 45 – Poor Maggie
“Hello,” said a soft, musical voice, and Leonardo looked up. In front of him stood the most beautiful young girl he had ever seen, a girl who might have frightened him but for the sad expression in her blue eyes. He knew about sadness.
– Eva Ibbotson, The Mystery of the Seventh Witch
Meggie did not say a word. However hard Farid tried to cheer her up she just sat there among the trees, her arms wrapped around her legs, perfectly silent. Yes, they had set many of the captives free, but her parents were not among them.
Not one of those who managed to escape had been injured. One of the children had twisted his ankle, that was all, and he was small enough for the grown-ups to carry him. The forest had swallowed them up so quickly that after only a few steps the Adderhead’s men had found themselves chasing shadows. Dustfinger hid the children inside a hollow tree, the women crawled underneath a thicket of wild vine and nettles, while the Prince’s bear kept the soldiers at a distance. The men had climbed trees and perched high up among the leaves; Dustfinger and the Prince were the last to hide, after leading the soldiers astray in different directions.
The Black Prince advised the freed captives to go back to Ombra and, for the time being, to join the strolling players still encamped there. He himself had other plans. Before he left he spoke to Meggie, and she did not look quite so hopeless after that.
“He said he won’t let anyone hang my father,” she told Farid. “He says he knows that Mo is not the Bluejay, and he and his men will make the Adderhead realize that he’s caught the wrong man.” And she looked so hopeful as she said this that Farid just nodded and murmured, “That’s great!” – although he could think only that the Adderhead would execute Silvertongue all the same.
