Baru shook his head. “Remember, these people fled the Kingdom. They may have little love yet for you, Prince. We may be exchanging one trouble for another.” The last was added with a wry smile.
Arutha said, “We have no choice. Until we know what lies beyond these mountains, we must seek out whatever aid chance brings us.” He permitted a brief pause while the body of the fallen Beasthunter was covered with rocks, forming a rude cairn. The dog stood stoically while this was being done. When it was finished, the dog refused to move, laying his head upon his master’s grave.
“Do we leave him?” asked Roald.
“No,” answered Baru. Again he spoke in the odd tongue, and reluctantly the dog came to his side. “The language used to command our dogs must be still the same, for he obeys.”
“How, then, do we proceed?” asked Arutha.
“With caution, but I think it best to let him lead us,” answered the hillman, indicating the dog. He spoke a single word, and the dog’s ears perked and he began trotting up the trail, waiting at the limit of their vision for them to follow.
Quickly they mounted and Arutha said, “What did you say?”
Baru said, “I said “home”. He will lead us to his people.”
NINE - Captives
The wind howled.
The riders pulled cloaks tightly about themselves. They had been following the Beasthound for more than a week. Two days after finding the dog they had passed over the crest of the Great Northern Mountains. Now they moved along a narrow trail just below a high ridge, running toward the northeast.
The dog had come to accept Baru as his master, for he obeyed every command the Hadati gave, while he ignored any spoken by the others. Baru called the dog Blutark, which he said meant, in the old Hadati tongue, an old friend rediscovered or come back from a long journey. Arutha hoped it was a favourable omen, and that those who bred the dog would feel similarly toward Arutha’s company.
Twice the dog had proven useful, signalling dangers along the trail. He could smell what even Baru and Martin’s hunters’ eyes missed. Both times they had surprised goblins camped along the trail. It was clear that Murmandamus controlled this route into the Northlands. Both encounters had taken place at junctions with trails clearly heading downward.
The trail had run southeasterly from Inclindel, then turned east, hugging the north side of the mountain ridges. In the distance they could see the vast reaches of the Northlands, and they wondered. To most men of the Kingdom, ‘the Northlands’ was a convenient label for that unknown place the other side of the mountains, the nature of which could only be speculated upon. But now they could see the Northlands below them, and the reality of the place dwarfed any speculation, for it was an immense reality. To the northwest a vast plain stretched away into the distant mists, the Thunderhell. Few men of the Kingdom had ever trod upon that grassy domain, and then only with the consent of the nomads who called the Thunderhell home. At the eastern edge of the Thunderhell a range of hills rose, and beyond were lands never seen by men of the Kingdom. Each turn in the road, each jog in the trail, and a new vista opened before them.
That the dog refused to descend caused them concern, for Martin avowed they would have more cover in the hills below than upon this open trail. Weaving along the north ridges of the mountains, they only now and then descended below the timberline. Upon three occasions they had noticed indications that this trail was not entirely natural, as if someone had once, long ago, undertaken to connect sections of it.
Not for the first time, Roald remarked, “That hunter wandered quite a distance from home, that’s for certain.” They were easily a hundred miles to the east of where they had found the body.
Baru said, “Yes, and that is a strange thing, for the Beasthunters were given the defence of an area. Perhaps he had been pursued for some time by those trolls.” But he knew, as did the others, that such a pursuit would be a matter of miles, not tens of miles. No, there was another reason that hunter had been so far from his home.
To pass the time, Arutha, Martin, and the boys had undertaken to learn Baru’s Hadati dialect, against the day of meeting Blutark’s owner’s kin. Laurie and Roald spoke fluent Yabonese and a smattering of the Hadati patois already, so it came quickly to them. Jimmy had the most difficulty, but he was able to make simple sentences.
Then Blutark came bounding back down the trail, his stubby tail wagging furiously. In atypical behaviour he barked loudly, and spun in place. Baru said, “It is strange . . .”